Should harry reid just keep quiet?
This man will never shut up he is small in stature and small in the mind.He is an enemy of the United States Of America.Mr.Reid gets hundreds of phone calls every day his voice mail is allways full and his staff is sick and tired of trying to clean up his statements as i was told by a staff member several weeks ago when you could get through to his Washington Office.
Once Democrats regain the majority, should they pass specific legislation to limit presidential power? What are the lessons learned?
The lesson is that the party in control goes back and forth from time to time. The democrats vastly increased the power of the president under Obama allowing him to use his pen and his phone to do what he could not even get through congress despite having control of both houses to start.The democrats use the same allegations against every republican president. They are all stupid, crazy and looking to blow up the world. Look back at the news reports of Ford, Reagan, Bush 41, Bush 43 and now Trump. Everyone of them was described similarly.The democrats thought it was great when Harry Reid ended the filibuster so the democrats could get more things through the senate without even trying to get any republican votes. They assumed they would have control forvever and that this would help lock them into power.DACA is all about trying to add a massive number of future democrats to help lock in their future control of the government. No doubt the democrats would be far less interested in these people if they were likely to be republicans.The lesson learned is that what goes around comes around. You cant vastly expand powers for the government you like and assume the other party should not be able to have the same abilities. Be careful what you wish for…you might just get it. You can thank the democrats for creating a very powerful presidency. They were sure Hillary would wim and it will be all good. Our system of government is all about checks and balances and the final check is the people at large who from time to time will change the party in power to right the wrongs they have seen. The last administration had lots of wrongs to be righted. The people did their job in throwing that admin out and putting in the other party.So far, this administration has exceeded my expectations in righting those wrongs, reducing the power of government and reclaiming the position of the United States as one who leads from the front and not from behind.It might be a good thing for legislation to be put in to reduce the power of the presidency. Just know that that whatever rules are set up will be in control of the other party at some point. If the rules are written well, this can be a very good thing. If those rules are written in the hyperpartisan way that the democrats like to opperate, I think they will regret it in the long run.
Could Democrats in the Senate filibuster all of the people’s business for the next 913 days to keep the SCOTUS seat unfilled?
No. As a few other answers have explained, there is no longer a filibuster for presidential appointments.But even if they could, they aren't that stupid. See, right now they are able to complain about the job the Trump administration is doing, and it might allow them to retake the Senate this fall (though it's a long shot, due to who is up for reelection). If they start being even more obviously obstructionist than the GOP was during Obama's term, they lose that ability. When something like the immigrant crisis from last week happens, if the Democrats are actively filibustering, Trump can blame the problem on them.Even more importantly is the economy, and how it relates to the 2020 elections. Right now, the economy is doing pretty well. If it continues to do well for the remainder of Trump’s first term, it is likely he will get reelected. If the economy stumbles, he will be much more vulnerable. However, if the economy stumbles after the Democrats have very clearly shown a refusal to do ANYTHING, then they will get the blame for the downturn. The narrative would be “the GOP was in power from 2016-2018 and the economy was good, then the Democrats took the House and filibustered the Senate, and everything went bad". That's a really brutal scenario for the Democrats to run against in 2020. They are better off giving Trump enough rope to hang himself.Even trying to stall until after the 2018 elections will likely hurt them. The GOP took a lot of flack for stalling Garland, and they had a much better reason (though a longer time period). It ended up working because the gamble paid off, and because having an open seat energized their base to help Trump win. The difference between an Obama appointee and a Trump appointee is much bigger than two Trump appointees with a different level of Senate support. The Democrats just don't have as much to gain waiting for 2019. Even if they get a majority, if they use it to refuse reasonable Trump appointments and leave the seat open until 2020, it WILL hurt them in that election. Their best bet is to confirm a relatively moderate conservative.
Could Obama somehow, in some way, become president again?
The 22nd amendment states (I shaved off the part about how it works for people who were president before it went into effect, as we no longer have any of those people):Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.(section 2 is unimportant, it talks about when it will go into effect. That’s done)So all it says is that Obama cannot be elected to the office of President, since he has already been elected twice.The twelfth amendment is fairly long but the only relevant phrase I can see is this:But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.Now, others will tell you this means that Obama cannot run for Vice President… but they do not appear to be correct. The 22nd amendment only talks about whether he can run for president, not whether he can serve as president. And the 12th only talks about whether the VP candidate can serve as president.Logically, he could run for VP, and could subsequently serve as President should the current president vacate the office, whether by resigning, being declared incompetent, or death.Similarly, there’s no reason to think that if Obama were Speaker of the House and the line of succession fall to him, that he would be skipped over; again, he’s not ineligible by reason of the 22nd, which only talks about running for office, not succeeding to the office by other means.Finally, the 22nd amendment could be repealed. Many people have proposed amendments to do so, including Ronald Reagan, including Democrats Rep. Barney Frank, Rep. José E. Serrano, Rep. Howard Berman, and Sen. Harry Reid,and Republicans Rep. Guy Vander Jagt, Rep. David Dreier and Sen. Mitch McConnellObama is a relatively young man and could certainly run for the office in 2020, or even later… he’s 55 now, and the current office holder was elected at the age of 70.
Are there any highly visible members of the Trump administration that you respect? If so, why? Why do you think they joined this administration?
Energy Secretary Rick Perry.I was totally astonished by Rick Perry’s reaction to being appointed to this office. Perry, of course, prior to being appointed Secretary of Energy, listed the entire Department as one that should be abolished, and I rather expected him to demolish the office from within the way that Scott Pruitt is for the EPA or arguably Rex Tillerson did with State. Or perhaps he thought to use it as a vehicle to advance the interests of his many friends in the oil and gas industry. But, on being appointed to the role, Secretary Perry apparently took the time to find out what he was actually supposed to do by the expedient process of reading the statutes that set out the duties of the Energy Secretary, and in so doing realized that those duties included the extremely serious duty to safeguard America’s nuclear weapons and nuclear weapon secrets. Wow, this really is important. Can’t be doing away with that. Having come to the sudden realization that this job really is important, he proceeded to immerse himself in fastidiously performing the duties of his office.While I have not always agreed with Secretary Perry’s policy decisions in his pursuit of his duties, he has, by any reasonable light, by and large sought to conscientiously perform the actual duties imposed on him by statute in a manner that serves what he reasonably believes to be the national interest, rather than his own personal interests or the personal interests of the President. Furthermore, in a time when virtually every other government department is rife with scandals about inappropriate spending, lavish travel, sound-proof phone booths, and five-figure dining tables, the Department of Energy has been the source of no significant scandal; Secretary Perry appears, by all rights, to be running a tight ship over there. And so I will recognize him for having discharged the duties of his office conscientiously and diligently, something which I would never have expected from the cartoonish character that Rick “Good Hair” Perry put forth when he was Governor of Texas or as a lackluster candidate for President in the 2016 primaries.
What do you think of Mitt Romney saying Trump shouldn't be impeached because he's a sitting president?
A sad example of Mitt-speak.It appears to be an effort to split the issue and speak out against impeachment without endorsing Trump or bringing his name into the discussion during his campaign.I like Romney.I think he would have done a better job than Obama did in his second term. However, people were sold on Obama’s 1.7% recovery rate and Mitt fell for Dem Tactic Number One—untruthful and shameless character assassination. He didn’t return fire against their character assassination and behaved like a gentleman toward Obama, lest racism charges take over the whole damn narrative, as the Dems would have done with 100% probability.Then there was that dog carrier Mitt built for the station wagon roof. Did you know it had a windshield? Did you ever see a motorcyclist whipping along with a dog in the basket behind him? A few dozen times in your life? Did you ever see goggles for the dog and say, “That’s too charming for words,” whip out your cell phone and ask if you could take a picture? Tons of people have. Check the internet. “Dogs riding motorcycles” gets 14 million hits.But, Romney got sidetracked and further depicted as a clueless billionaire who doesn’t care a whit for lesser beings than himself. The dog, however, lived to a ripe old age and the dog carrier had served its purpose as a weapon in the guerrilla war against Romney.They hung his wealth around his neck like an albatross by lying unapologetically. “Hasn’t paid taxes in 10 years,” said Harry Reid, and gloated unapologetically when his lie was exposed.But, I digress. I think the comment is Romney’s way of discouraging calls for impeachment proceedings that spring from anger campaigns. As a statement, it’s impossible to interpret literally because only a sitting official is a candidate for impeachment. No rationale, no facts, etc.