How fast can you say the title 5 times?
Okay, now that you’re in the right frame of mind after that fun empty exercise, I’m going to ask you to indulge in a little speculative fun as well. Consider. . .
Raw Story features an interesting checkmate scenario.
However, it stops short of printing the punch line to their argument, “Pelosi said, ‘No!’”
Instead, it offers the intriguing legal conclusion to the high stakes political gamesbrinksmanship Trump, a purported businessman, not a politician, has chosen to engage in.
The shutdown is an impeachable offense if Trump vetoes a bill to reopen the government.
How likely is that his next move? Highly unlikely as long as Mitch McConnell continues to withhold bills from Trump’s desk that he judges he will not sign in the first place. So far, McConnell has been able to save Trump’s a$$. But how long can he be effective?
Congress is controller of the federal government purse strings. Trump is desperate — I repeat, life-and-death-desperate — to get government funding so that he can consummate his legacy real estate deal and keep Fox and Trump Friends from treating him like red meat. Trump may wish to pick Congress’ pocket with his threat to declare a “national emergency.” Gawd knows, he thinks just by uttering those words he creates one. Sadly for him, Americans realize that he doesn’t mean an invasion of armed little brown people who “have problems” (his words) is at our southern border with Mexico. Rather, the American people have ‘woke.’ The reality is that his cooked up emergency is really a painful other and real one — Nancy Pelosi’s flat damn refusal to give him anything more than $1 for his flim-flam scheme.
Besides, for Trump to order the Pentagon, with a national emergency declaration, to turn over it’s construction and reconstruction money to him for the purpose of fulfilling his personal phantom fantasy, why, that in itself may be an impeachable offense.
Trump does not have an “absolute right” to declare a national emergency when none exists. There are laws about that. Namely, the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. §§ 1601 et seq.). Military commanders are not obligated to turn over Congressional appropriations for defense to him or to the Department of Homeland Security — the agency responsible for border security — quite the contrary. Article 92 of the UCMJ clearly defines the punishment due a soldier who disobeys a legal order. Nowhere is a soldier compelled to obey an illegal order. To do so would expose service personnel to legal liability. I imagine the joint chiefs are being advised by the military general counsel to follow the example of Speaker Pelosi and just say, ‘No!’ Or else, lawyer up for their coming Congressional committee hearings and possible criminal defenses.
After all her time in the House of Representatives, and especially over the last two years, I imagine Pelosi, her staff, and the legal eagles she’s no doubt been consulting, have had plenty of time to ‘strateegerize.’ Like Mueller, I bet she knows more than we do about the minutiae of the ins and outs of Constitutional law, especially regarding the limits of the executive.
So, I feel comfortable knowing that in a contest of steely spine-ness, Pelosi wins. McConnell has totally withdrawn his head into his shell. Pence wishes he were a turtle. All Pelosi has to do is follow Nancy Reagan’s admonition, “Just say ‘No!’” and wait for Trump to flame out by vetoing a bill to reopen government after McConnell’s resistance to pressure from his Republican caucus collapses his resistance to bringing such a bill up for a vote in the Senate. If it’s the same bill Republicans supported before Trump pulled the rug out from under them, they can hardly vote it down when it comes before them again. Be assured, that’s the bill Pelosi will present.
And if Trump folds and tries to turn Tyrant by declaring a fake national emergency, my money’s on the military command’s stiffness of spine as long as their General Counsel prods them in the back to remind them that the president’s fake emergency orders are probably illegal. Nancy knows how to count her votes and her “generals.”
Thus, there is nothing left for a poor liberal to do but make popcorn.