Tuesday, June 03, 2014

Feinstein upset by Obama's "enforcement discretion"

Via Hot Air, the Senate Intelligence chairwoman is upset that the White House broke the law by not giving notice before releasing five Taliban terrorists back to Qatar.  Now that Dianne Feinstein is being ignored, it's kind of a big deal.  Where was Dianne's selective outrage during Obama's other flights of enforcement fancy?
But even before he decreed alterations of key ACA provisions — delaying enforcement of certain requirements for health insurance and enforcement of employers’ coverage obligations — he had effectively altered congressionally mandated policy by altering work requirements of the 1996 welfare reform; and compliance requirements of the No Child Left Behind education law; and some enforcement concerning marijuana possession; and the prosecution of drug crimes entailing mandatory minimum sentences; and the enforcement of immigration laws pertaining to some young people.
Whatever, man: nation of laws, nation of whims.  Look, everybody's doin' it:
Qatar has moved five Afghan Taliban prisoners freed in exchange for a U.S. soldier to a residential compound and will let them move freely in the country, a senior Gulf official said on Tuesday, a step likely to be scrutinized by Washington.
Enforcement discretion.  It's all the scrutible rage.

Extra - More "discretion": when you can't convince 'em, tell 'em to suck it up and salute: "White House Overrode Normal Rules of Interagency Debate on Bergdahl Exchange to Get the Answer They Wanted."



5 comments:

Thee, me, whee! said...

Dianne Feinstein called torture "a black mark against the United States" while criticizing then-president Bush for vetoing the anti-torture bill. All this was after Bush’s previous discretionary rejection of the Geneva Convention had been overturned by the Supreme Court.

Where were the conservatives then, hailing Feinstein for defending the rule of law? Where was the GOP consensus against imperial lawbreaking during Hamdan v. Rumsfeld? The why-so-quiet? door swings both ways. And selective outrage is just the flipside of selective praise, the kind we see every time a Senator Feinstein or a New York Times editorial or a Jon Stewart comedy segment has unexpected conservative appeal.

In 2006, when the ruling came down against Bush's illegal wiretapping, it was deemed "judge-shopping" by this blog. Today, "some enforcement of marijuana possession" is held up as an intolerable abrogation of U.S. law, and this blog's selective outrage about selective outrage comes into sharper focus.

Eric said...

Are you saying that Bush did not comply with the law as written? Hamdan had his day in court. The Bush administration issued a stay on the 2006 wiretapping ruling which was overturned by the 6th circuit but not before the Washington Post called it a grandstanding "judicial misfire."

Meanwhile, Obama ignores the very requirements of the law he signed because he does what he wants. Suck it up and salute.

UShouldveElectedKucinichIfYouWantedChange said...

DiFi's just mad she wasn't in the loop. Some of the Dem base out there are saying she was kept out of the loop because she leaked details about an earlier prisoner exchange. And turns out she has a history of leaking; apparently back in her local politician days, she leaked some details about the Ramirez case that shouldn't have been leaked.

But who cares? What's the rule of law to a president who spent time in college studying the Constitution in order to better learn how to circumvent it?
"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." You're gonna get fooled again.

History of leaking said...

Some of the Dem base out there are saying [Dianne Feinstein] was kept out of the loop because she leaked details about an earlier prisoner exchange.

Ok, that explains why Feinstein was kept out of the loop (at least according to your standards of evidence). So how about the other 48 senators? I exempt the marrionette Harry Reid because he is purely a "useful idiot."

When you're done you can then explain why the House wasn't informed.

What the Heckler? said...

So, the NSA wiretapping and Hamdan are examples of a White House fully complying with existing law. (Especially if we ignore the basis of that 6th circuit ruling, and avoid looking at the end of Hamdan's days in court.)

But changes and delays to the ACA that are fully permissible according to provisions written into the ACA itself, and which have many legal precedents, are contemptuous, lawless decrees. Intriguing theory.

When you're through sucking and saluting, read the decision in Heckler v. Chaney (1985), a 9-0 Supreme Court ruling affirming certain discretionary non-enforcement authority at a president's choosing. That decision will certainly be cited in the defenses of future lawsuits against Obama's alterations of the ACA's oversight... or rather, it would be, if any petitioner had standing to sue over them, which they almost certainly won't. Again, stay away from that 6th court decision in the NSA case.

1985. I wonder which president unilaterally thumbed his nose at the rule of law then?