The Discerning Texan
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
-- Edmund Burke
Thursday, February 22, 2007
George Will rips Spineless Dems
According to George Will--who lays into the Democrats for their mindless and unrelenting attacks on the President, their characterization of the North Korea deal, and their approach to "supporting" the troops while working behind the scenes to sabotage them--there is a pretty simple solution for the President should the House Dems try to adopt conditional funding which attempts to restrict the President in his conduct of the war:
Suppose Democrats write their restrictions on the use of forces into legislation that funds the war. And suppose the president signs the legislation but ignores the restrictions, calling them unconstitutional usurpations of his powers as commander in chief. What could Democrats do? Cross First Street NE and ask the Supreme Court to compel the president to acquiesce in congressional micromanagement of a war? The court probably would refuse to get involved on the grounds that this is a "political question."UPDATE: Meanwhile Victor Davis Hanson has some choice words for the numerical majority of Dems in the Senate who voted FOR the war.
The court has held that some constitutional controversies should be settled by the government's political -- meaning elected -- branches. In 1962, the court said that a case involves a political question when there is:
" . . . textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department; or a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it; or the impossibility of deciding without an initial policy determination of a kind clearly for nonjudicial discretion; or the impossibility of a court's undertaking independent resolution without expressing lack of the respect due coordinate branches of government; or an unusual need for unquestioning adherence to a political decision already made; or the potentiality of embarrassment from multifarious pronouncements by various departments on one question."
In that welter of criteria there are reasons that the court will not rescue congressional Democrats from facing the logic of their posturing. They lack the will to exercise their clearly constitutional power to defund the war. And they lack the power to achieve that end by usurping the commander in chief's powers to conduct a war.
Labels: Democrat Sabotage, Iraq, President Bush, US Politics, Victor Davis Hanson
