The Obama administration's signature policy accomplishment was sold to the American people with a pack of lies, and an inversion of the Constitution.
What you may not have noticed -- I didn't, until it was pointed out -- was how much it was also sold with openly anti-Semitic attacks on Jewish deal opponents. Fold that in with the piece from last week on whether or not observant Jews might be rethinking their politics. It's not as if they haven't got good reasons to do so.
As for the rest of us, as we watch the Iran deal recertification process that's coming up in the next few weeks, it's worth keeping all this in mind. We were never told the truth about this. The 'ratification' process was an unconstitutional sham. That it is also built on what is at best a reckless unconcern with the threat of nuclear genocide aimed at Israel is worth noticing, too.
The people have grown addicted to self deception and lies.
ReplyDeleteAs the ancient 12 tribes thought that worshipping evil gods was the same as the contract with JHVH, the Alpha Omega. It was not. The prophets had a direct connection with the Divine Counsel and told the Israelis this. Many of the tribes didn't like it and killed off the prophets. As punishment, the Assyrians came in and conquered, put down, the 10 tribes of the north and carried them off to plant them in some other garden.
Americans were taught a derivation of the Divine Mandate. That they were given the land, by right of conquest and European superiority. This contract of a Promised Land will only last until the land spews forth the wicked from this land. This land is not reserved for the evil vassals of Lucifer. The Four Angels protecting the country was removed, for lack of faith and for the pride of wickedness and actions against divine laws, around 2001.
Humans deceive and walk around with a mask on, to function in society. People should not have forgotten that just because they elect people to DC or the oligarchy puts them in the Un, that humans cease to be humans.
Trust in the Government, that is the one rule of the totalitarian state. Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state. Obey, that is all.\
I wouldn't call Plame an anti Semite, that's something of an over reaction by the Jewish lobby. "Deep State agent" is more accurate and closer via my intel analysis.
While I agree with the rest of OP and its thrust, I'm still having trouble with the concept of the JCPOA being an inversion of the Constitution. The bleats to that effect that have been extant all these years strike me more as an inversion of the facts.
ReplyDeleteEric Hines
I mean that the Constitutional requirement for approval of a treaty is a 2/3rds majority vote in the Senate. Corker-Cardin inverted that requirement, such that a simple majority was allowed to impose a requirement that another bill be passed to disapprove the treaty. That meant that the treaty could be deemed to have become binding based on the approval of only a minority of Senators: a filibuster of the resolution of disapproval only required about 1/3rd of the Senate to succeed.
ReplyDeleteThus, instead of needing a supermajority, they created a process where a minority could prevail. That's an inversion of the intended process.
Of course, they also claimed it was 'not a treaty,' though I find that utterly implausible given the breadth and depth of the agreement. It wasn't a bilateral agreement on some little point, but a broad agreement that did everything from lift sanctions to promise nuclear technology to a state sponsor of terrorism -- as well as providing them with substantial payoffs.
I can see why you couldn't get a supermajority to sign off on that. I'm unclear on how it could possibly be in accord with the Constitution to adopt such an agreement on a filibuster.
Except that no treaty was ever offered the Senate; Corker-Cardin was an attempt to get Senate input into the Executive Agreement that Obama-Kerry developed for the JCPOA, and EAs need no input from any part of the Congress. You can consider the EA to be a treaty to your heart's content, but that doesn't impact the legalities, no matter their inconvenience.
ReplyDeleteEric Hines
My heart's content is not the issue. If we accept that reading, the relevant clause of Article II is a dead letter. Why, no Senate input is even needed if this sort of thing is merely an executive action! Any President can make whatever international agreement, even one treating nuclear weapons plus cash for terror sponsoring states, without any input from Congress at all.
ReplyDeleteI can accept no constitutional reading that renders dead crucial checks and balances on matters as important as the treaty power. Really, I'm surprised at your being willing to countenance such a thing. You're normally a by-the-book guy on the Constitution, and I'm sure it's not because you're greatly in favor of this particular deal. What's at the back of your willingness to gut the Senate's advice-and-consent role in the treaty power? It's not this agreement, I'm fairly sure.
The fact that I'm a textualist, not one who interprets the Constitution to fit the times. Art II puts the President at the head of foreign policy, not part of a committee on foreign policy. If he wants to do something permanent--create a Law of the Land like a treaty--he must get Senate buy-in, if not Congressional buy-in. Indeed, the Constitution already is internally contradictory in this regard: most Laws of the Land require both Houses of Congress to approve, not just one. If he just wants something temporarily convenient to transient policy, as something not done under the Authority of the United States but rather under his own authority as the sole holder of executive Power, he need not seek Congressional approval.
ReplyDeleteThat a President might be mistaken in this or that move does not alter the text of the Constitution, which was not written for perfection. If We the People, for whom both the President and the Senate work, disagree with a President's action, or that of any Senator or all of them, it's on us to replace him and them with ones more agreeable to our requirements. We don't get to hide behind a Modern Liberalist creative interpretation in lieu of that obligation.
No check or balance is undone by EAs, nor is the Senate's advise-and-consent gutted by them; EAs are ephemeral, and advise-and-consent applies only to permanences. Indeed, the check and balance is internally present: any President can alter or undo altogether that which a prior President has done as easily as the thing was done in the first place.
It's also convenient to us, as it turns out in the present case (though this is a happy side effect, not a goal): imagine trying to get even the unpopular--erroneously ratified--JCPOA-as-treaty rescinded by this Senate.
Note, too, that I don't countenance the JCPOA, which is an entirely separate thing from being basically agreed with Executive powers as the Constitution structures them.
Eric Hines
So, we clearly agree on the importance of a textual reading; we disagree about what it says here.
ReplyDeleteThat the treaty power is located in Article II means (I agree) that it is chiefly reposed in the executive. But the fact that it imposes a clear limit of needing to obtain advice and consent to the Senate leaves me doubting your conclusion that "Art II puts the President at the head of foreign policy, not part of a committee on foreign policy." It sounds to me as if the Constitution intends to insist on a committee in these matters.
And one can see why, in the supremacy clause of the Constitution. Treaties are handled there as part of the supreme law, subordinate only to the Constitution's authority. So -- I submit -- it is not proper to read that clause of Art II as establishing a single branch's authority. All other means of adjusting the supreme law require wide appeal: to a supermajority of the Congress, plus the states; to the supermajorities of the states. One would be surprised, or anyway I would be, to discover that the President alone had a similar power.
You're reading the thing too broadly. "Art II puts the President at the head of foreign policy, not part of a committee on foreign policy." When the President wants to make law out of a particular foreign policy move, of course he needs Congressional buy-in--Senate approval in the cases of treaties.
ReplyDeleteBut foreign policy is far more than making law: it's shooting fights, it's international trade, it's international relations, and in the present context, it's agreements between/among heads of state. Committee action/interference is inappropriate here; only an Executive, a single guy in charge, can do this effectively, for all that he might make mistakes. But it also means an Executive, a single guy in charge, is better disposed to correct a prior mistake than is a committee. This is why the Constitution reposes foreign policy in the hands of an Executive, not in the collective hands of a necessarily politicized committee.
And: the President has no power to adjust[] the supreme law. An EA is no treaty, and so it is not part of the body of supreme Law. It's binding only until the next President comes along and disposes of it.
Since no treaty was devised, and none offered, the particular foreign policy move needed no Congressional buy-in. The Senate's failure in its vote to undo the EA--under the terms of Congress' own devising--is no recommendation for expanding the Congress' role in foreign policy beyond what the Constitution mandates. Such an expansion wants a Constitutional Amendment, anyway. I hear there is a Constitutional Convention under development.
Eric Hines
Eric, to clarify, I take it you mean that, while people might be treating the JCPOA like it's a treaty simply because it's an international agreement, the absence of Congressional buy-in means that it's clearly not a treaty, and thus has no more permanence or force of law than the willingness of whichever President is in office to continue to abide by it?
ReplyDeleteNo, I mean that it's not a treaty by design, in addition to it's not having been offered to the Senate for ratification as a treaty--both. Although the lack of ratification as a treaty is dispositive by itself.
ReplyDeleteToo, as far as I can tell, the only folks who are treating the JCPOA like it's a treaty are those who are objecting to its lack of Senate ratification. I could be wrong on this; my sample is not very large.
Eric Hines
in addition to it's not having been offered to the Senate for ratification as a treaty
ReplyDeleteOn the flip side, it'd be interesting to see the argument and its outcome were something offered to the Senate for treaty ratification, the Senate rejects it, and the President decides to enact it, anyway, as an Executive Agreement.
A related question: would the tenor of the argument differ between a Senate rejection with a majority vote in favor but short of the require two-thirds vs a Senate rejection with a majority voting against it?
Eric Hines
That's exactly the kind of problem that I'm thinking about. It seems to me that the Constitution intends to invest decisions about what Washington called 'entangling alliances' not in the President, but in a joint consideration of the Presidency and the Senate.
ReplyDeleteThe Constitution already does that. EAs cannot be "entangling alliances," though, because they are not alliances.
ReplyDeleteEric Hines
Well, they could be. A President can recognize a country on his own authority, and in the case of Truman and Israel, that recognition itself made us an ally because it put us on the side of proclaiming Israel's right to exist. If Trump were to recognize Taiwan, for example, that would throw us in on their side in a similar way. So there are cases in which you'd get a functional alliance from an executive action.
ReplyDeleteA "functional" alliance isn't an alliance, and it can be undone at will. Unlike an actual alliance.
ReplyDeleteIn the particular event--which aside isn't totally relevant or irrelevant--I'm not sure it's useful to recognize an island [g]; I'm also not sure the RoC would want formal recognition from the US without an actual alliance to go along with it.
Eric Hines
It doesn't matter what the US Constitution says, because DC has learned where the loopholes are.
ReplyDeleteThis is one such "loophole" that they have learned how to game.