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Originally Posted by Aladdin Sane
After listening to the Democrats screech for the last two years about the rule of law, this Jake Tapper report should be surprising …. but it’s not. Apparently, Barack Obama finds treaty ratification a little too complicated, and so he figures he can just commit the US to nuclear disarmament and bypass Congressional oversight...
....Uh, pardon me, but how many seats in the Senate does Obama’s party hold? Isn’t it 60? If Obama is simply moving forward with a straightforward, supportable treaty with Russia to reduce nuclear stockpiles in an effective verification system, why couldn’t he get a quick ratification?
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Aladdin.....Obama and Medvedev signed several executive agreements today....one to allow the US to transport arms and military personnel across Russian land and airspace into Afghanistan.... another to resume military cooperation, suspended after Russia invaded neighboring Georgia last year.. and a third to create a framework for a replacement to START and reduce nuclear warheads and delivery systems to a level lower than Bush.
Are you suggesting these agreements require Senate approval or somehow represent a "unitary executive"?
How is proposing to slash nuclear stockpiles much more significantly than Bush's rigid lower limit "more of the same"?
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The GOP gave George H. W. Bush enough support in 1991 to pass the original START treaty, so it’s not as if ratification would be impossibly complicated.
And as much as the Democrats howled over the supposed devotion of George Bush to a “unitary executive,” Obama seems to have no trouble bypassing the check on executive power for treaty negotiation written explicitly into the Constitution, in Article II, Section 2:
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It took the Senate about 15 months to ratified START after GHW Bush signed it. Yes it is complicated and signing a new framework today hasnt bypassed anything.
Perhaps the
"words. just words" and the
"screeching and howling" are coming from partisan right wing editorials that have no interest in presenting anything beyond superficial talking points, if instead, they can stir up their base and spread their less than forthright message.
They might even applaud your recent efforts here on their behalf.