While I’m sure President Obama has fantasies of launching drones on Congress, it’s not over his drone policy–while controversial among wonks, it’s wildly popular.
Obama’s Drone Fantasy
While I’m sure President Obama has fantasies of launching drones on Congress, it’s not over his drone policy.
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8 responses to “Obama’s Drone Fantasy”
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@Mark: I’m not sure “anything besides politics” prevents presidents from doing a lot of truly awful, obviously unconstitutional things. The power of the office is simply enormous and there’s a lot he can do on his own authority that neither Congress nor the courts can do anything about until after the fact.
That worries the hell out of me at a general level, and it’s why I push for institutionalization of rules. But I’ve actually got very little concern about presidents going rogue and ordering Americans killed willy nilly. They go through a rigorous two year gauntlet before getting the job and ultimately their orders have to get carried out by competent professionals who would surely balk at something that outrageous.
That’s not to say that enough outrageous things don’t get done regardless.
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If he really wanted to put a Hellfire up the Republican Caucuses collective arse all he would need do is issue an Executive Statement saying he has no intention of putting a Hellfire up their arse.
The reflexively opposed Republicans, likely led by Mensa Member Ted Cruz, would then immediately go on record saying that he should indeed put a Hellfire up their collective arse…and failing to so immediately is just another indication of the President leading from behind, weakening the security of America,apologizing to our enemies, and taking us down the path to socialism and beyond the thunderdome.
At which point Obama should justifiably release the Kracken. -
The power of the office is simply enormous and there’s a lot he can do on his own authority that neither Congress nor the courts can do anything about until after the fact.
That assumes that Congress and the courts want to do anything, period. I know that the courts don’t and I’m fairly convinced that Congress doesn’t either.
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They go through a rigorous two year gauntlet before getting the job and ultimately their orders have to get carried out by competent professionals who would surely balk at something that outrageous.
And yet we got W. Twice.
I was reading Rachel Maddow’s Drift a couple days ago. (Good information, good read.) She described a drill at Minot AFB in which it took two days, through multiple equipment and procedural failures, to load a B-52 with nuke cruise missiles. Maybe it wasn’t a failure. Maybe they were practicing their response to an order from W to bomb Iran.
I wonder how hard it would be to get a finding that certain Republican congresspeople are a threat to the security of the United States. There is pretty compelling evidence.
