Tag Archives: Joint session of the United States Congress

Common Sense From One Of My Favorite Liberals

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Alan Dershowitz is a Professor at Harvard University. He is a brilliant man with unassailable credentials as a political liberal. He has campaigned for President Obama twice. He posted an article in the Wall Street Journal today.

His article on the opinion page deals with the upcoming visit to America by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Professor Dershowitz states:

At bottom, this controversy is not mainly about protocol and politics—it is about the constitutional system of checks and balances and the separation of powers.

Under the Constitution, the executive and legislative branches share responsibility for making and implementing important foreign-policy decisions. Congress has a critical role to play in scrutinizing the decisions of the president when these decisions involve national security, relationships with allies and the threat of nuclear proliferation.

Whether or not Iran gets nuclear weapons should not be a partisan issue–if Iran goes nuclear, all Americans are in danger.

Professor Dershowitz continues:

Whether one agrees or disagrees with Speaker John Boehner ’s decision to invite Mr. Netanyahu or Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to accept, no legal scholar can dispute that Congress has the power to act independently of the president in matters of foreign policy. Whether any deal with Iran would technically constitute a treaty requiring Senate confirmation, it is certainly treaty-like in its impact. Moreover, the president can’t implement the deal without some action or inaction by Congress.

…Another reason members of Congress should not boycott Mr. Netanyahu’s speech is that support for Israel has always been a bipartisan issue. The decision by some members to boycott Israel’s prime minister endangers this bipartisan support. This will not only hurt Israel but will also endanger support for Democrats among pro-Israel voters. I certainly would never vote for or support a member of Congress who walked out on Israel’s prime minister.

Professor Dershowitz concludes:

Inviting a prime minister of an ally to educate Congress about a pressing foreign-policy decision is in the highest tradition of our democratic system of separation of powers and checks and balances.

This is a security issue for all Americans. Anyone in Congress who boycotts this speech should be defeated as soon as they are up for re-election.

Avoiding Working With The People Who Actually Understand The Threat

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Fox News posted an article today stating that the United States is withholding the details of the nuclear negotiations with Iran from Israel. Since Israel is the country most threatened by an Iranian nuclear weapon and since Israel is the country with the best intelligence on the Iranian nuclear program, this approach makes very little sense.

The article reports:

In extraordinary admissions that reflect increasingly strained ties between the U.S. and Israel, the White House and State Department said they were not sharing everything from the negotiations with the Israelis and complained that Israeli officials had misrepresented what they had been told in the past. Meanwhile, senior U.S. officials privately blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself for “changing the dynamic” of previously robust information-sharing by politicizing it.

The comments came as a late March deadline to forge the outline of an Iran nuclear deal looms. Netanyahu has angered the White House by his open opposition to a deal he believes threatens Israel’s existence, and by accepting a Republican invitation to address Congress about Iran in early March without consulting the White House, a breach of diplomatic protocol.

The article further reports:

Netanyahu has insisted that Iran, whose top officials have sworn to obliterate Israel, should not be allowed to enrich any uranium. The U.S. and its partners say that stance is untenable because Iran would never accept it.

As the talks have progressed, Netanyahu’s opposition to an agreement has increased over what he believes to be extreme concessions made to Iran that would leave it as a threshold nuclear weapons power and a direct threat to Israel’s existence.

The White House and State Department maintained that the U.S. will not leave Israel threatened. They also insisted that Israel has not been completely cut out of the loop and that overall security cooperation with the Jewish state remains strong.

If Iran will not accept the prohibition of enriching uranium, doesn’t anyone think there might be a reason for that? Have we not learned from what happened with North Korea (which incidentally has played a very large role in Iran’s nuclear program and nuclear talks)? Any treaty that comes out of the current negotiations with Iran is not worth the paper it is written on. President Obama heralding a treaty with Iran is very much along the lines of Neville Chamberlain declaring, “Peace for our time” after the 1938 Munich Agreement. We know how that turned out.

Some Common Sense From Boston

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Holly Robichaud writes a column for the Boston Herald. She posted an article today about the recent dust-up between President Obama and Speaker of the House John Boeher. President Obama is upset because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin 
Netanyahu is addressing a joint session of Congress without the President’s permission. So what is the dust-up really about?

Holly explains:

President Obama’s latest White House hissy fit is over House Speaker John Boehner’s bold move to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin 
Netanyahu to address Congress. Obama claims to be upset over protocol, but that’s just spin. His real concern is on the message that Boehner and Netanyahu want to deliver to us. Their plan is to educate the public on the dangerousness of Iran’s nuclear program, that we might be at least as well informed as we now are on football psi requirements.

…Iran may claim their nuclear ambitions are for peaceful purposes, but they have made it clear over the years they want to wipe Israel off the map. Hence, Tehran needs to know that the United States is serious about halting its nuclear program and protecting our close ally.

Obama should be embracing Netanyahu and tough sanctions, not rejecting them. If there are no repercussions for Iran developing nuclear capabilities, they won’t stop.

Obviously Obama is legacy-shopping with a determination to get any agreement with Iran. If you think the Middle East is dangerous now, just wait.

Fortunately, Boehner has recovered the president’s fumble. No one will accuse the speaker of having a Deflategate issue in this foreign policy.

Meanwhile, the media is focused on deflated footballs, hoping that we wouldn’t notice the problem with Iran until it explodes around us.

Avoiding Listening To Someone Who Knows

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Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could easily be considered an expert on terrorism. I suspect he didn’t want to be an expert on terrorism, but events have certainly caused him to learn more than he might have wanted to learn. Prime Minister Netanyahu will be in Washington in March to attend an American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference and will speak to Congress at that time. Speaker John Boehner had originally invited the Prime Minister to speak to Congress in February, but since the Prime Minister will be in Washington in March, the March date was selected. The Obama Administration is very upset that they were not consulted about the invitation and have stated that President Obama will not meet with the Prime Minister because the meeting would be too close to the Israeli elections. President Obama has accused Congress of overstepping its bounds by asking Prime Minister Netanyahu to speak.

The Times of Israel posted an article today about the conflict.

The article reports the ‘spoiled brat’ reaction of the Obama Administration:

“We thought we’ve seen everything,” the newspaper quoted an unnamed senior US official as saying. “But Bibi managed to surprise even us.

“There are things you simply don’t do. He spat in our face publicly and that’s no way to behave. Netanyahu ought to remember that President Obama has a year and a half left to his presidency, and that there will be a price,” he said.

Threatening our only ally in the Middle East? It  is a shame that President Obama is ignoring the one country that would actually be helpful in fighting the war with Islamic terrorists.

In an interview scheduled to be on television Sunday night, Speaker Boehner commented that he was amazed that a President who is ruling by executive order and executive memorandum would accuse Congress of overstepping their bounds.

What goes around comes around.

 

 

The Politics Of Scheduling

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The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

Image via Wikipedia

I haven’t mentioned the dust-up about the scheduling of the President’s speech on the economy because I really wasn’t too impressed by all the ruckus. Frankly I thought the whole discussion was dumb. However, Michael Barone, who is considerably smarter than I am, posted a very interesting article about the kerfuffle at the Washington Examiner website tonight.

It is naive (at best) to believe that President Obama was unaware that the Republican presidential candidates were having a debate on the night that he first suggested making a speech about the economy to a joint session of Congress. I think it is also a safe guess that he knew this would be Rick Perry’s first appearance as a candidate and that Rick Perry is a definite threat to President Obama’s desire to serve two terms. I also expect that President Obama also assumed that someone would actually watch his speech (or the Republican debate).

Michael Barone points out that the request to give a speech before a joint session of Congress on Wednesday showed a lack of respect for the Constitution. Congress is a separate branch of government and is not subject to Presidential dictates. Mr. Barone points out that in the past when a joint session of Congress was requested by the President, the arrangements were made privately, then announced.

The original plan of a Wednesday night debate also showed a contempt for public opinion.

The article reports:

White House press secretary Jay Carney said it was just “coincidental” that the president wanted to speak at the same time as the Reagan Library debate. It was just “one debate that’s one of many on one channel.”

Wow. The article points out that in the past President Obama has tried to upstage opposition with scheduling.

The article lists some other weaknesses of the Obama Presidency that are becoming very apparent. I strongly suggest that you follow the link above and read the entire article. This is a difficult time for the President–the economy is not doing well and his poll numbers are falling–I expect we will see him play some serious hardball in the coming months.

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