Charlie Cooke really really doesn't like President Biden's student loan forgiveness program:
“I consider this to be a constitutional crisis,” he said. “I think that from start to finish, we are witnessing a president test the established legal order of the United States. . . . His broader party know that he’s not allowed to. But he went ahead and willfully did it anyway.”
These vast, sweeping changes are deeply out of line with our Founding documents. “To go back to first principles,” he says, “this is why we have a Congress. This is why we don’t have a dictatorship. Nothing we have seen from the Biden admin in the last two months related to this executive order would’ve been different in a dictatorship. Every decision’s been executive.”
Joe Biden, dictator!
This is the same schtick conservatives pulled on President Obama and it's equally ridiculous this time around. Is the student loan program unconstitutional? I doubt it, but it's possible. And if it is, the Supreme Court will say so and the program will be revoked.
This happens All. The. Time. Presidents push the boundaries of their authority. The Department of Justice backs them up with legal opinions. The opposition takes them to court. The court then rules one way or another.
Conservatives screamed for years about DACA, the Obama executive order that gave dreamers (kids who were brought across the border to the US at a young age) an across-the-board approval to work, go to school, and avoid deportation. Tyranny! But nothing stopped conservatives from suing—which they did—and they found a friendly district judge in (of course) Texas to rule in their favor and block an expanded version of DACA. The law then meandered through the court system, going up and down to the Supreme Court a couple of times but staying partially alive. Conservatives kept on going, though, and now that Joe Biden is president he responded in the usual way: he appealed. He'll probably lose that appeal and then move on to the Supreme Court. They'll either approve DACA; strike it down; strike it down partially; or send it back to a lower court. Some tyranny.
So let's cut out the dictator talk unless you have serious grounds for it. If the Supreme Court eventually rules against DACA, the Biden administration will obey the court and cancel it. That's how a democracy works. There are no jackbooted thugs on our doorsteps.
Charlie Cooke get that beam out of your eye before you talk about the mote in Brandon's eye.
“… If the Supreme Court eventually rules against DACA, the Biden administration will obey the court…”
The republicans count on democrats being responsible. We should reconsider this approach to governance. I guess if the democrats win 20+ house sets and 5+ senate seats in November we can afford to be magnanimous. Otherwise… no.
DACA is a big nothing while Republican born agains flood the U.S. with illegals. I give any Democrat 10000 to mention and campaign on it.
Interesting. I have wondered who was funding the caravans. Central America is a hot bed of evangelicals working the rubes.
Will they? Can you put the sauce back in the bottle?
What happens to any loans that were forgiven before the program was blocked?
Not twenty & five, that's classic Justinian trolling hyperbole. But Democrat's expanding the party advantage in House from five (at start of the last session, coincidentally on the occasion of the March on Washington, January 6, 2021) to eight or ten sounds plausible, plus 52 Senators (all holds, with Ohio & Pennsylvania flipping).
Not Ohio, sadly. But hopefully Wisc.
In that case, I feel like J.D. ANTIVAXXX only leaves politics like either Larry Craig or R. "Budd" Dwyer.
In the latter case, I hope that Yale Medical School can collect his brainpan for research purposes, to get a better idea of the physical manifestation of psychopathy.
"What happens to any loans that were forgiven before the program was blocked?"
What about the $690B in the PPP program that Trump authorized?
They are forgiving THOSE loans as well
Is corporate forgiveness of loans more palatable that forgiveness of loans that make many Americans seem more employable to those SAME corporations?
You seem to say that if Democrats win bigly, you will follow the law. Otherwise, your side can use any means necessary to get your way, even if it harms the Republic. Before you accuse me of thinking the GOP is purer than the wind-driven snow, It was the Democrats who nuclear optioned the filibuster away to make it easier for Democrats to get judicial and presidential nominees through the system. But, it took the GOP to nuclear option the filibuster away for Supreme Court nominees. I believe that early in his presidency, Trump tried to get McConnell to nuclear option the filibuster away for everything. McConnell rightly refused.
Article 1 gives Congress explicit authority to make procedural rules. Which is how the filibuster came about in the first place early in the 19th century. Democrats can abolish it any time they like. So can Republicans. Or either party could increase cloture to 67 votes. Or 80 votes. It's all perfectly constitutional.
Attacking the United States Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power, on the other hand, isn't in the constitution.
PS: You're a deeply unserious clown.
I understand the history of the filibuster. I didn't say what Harry Reid did when he changed the rules to confirm judicial and other nominees or what Mitch McConnell did when he changed the rules to confirm Supreme Court judges was unconstitutional.
I thought what happened on January 6th was awful. I was in shock.
The people who tried to stop the proceedings of counting the ballots on that horrible day are being prosecuted, and rightly so. Although, many of them were held without bail or charges for months. I cannot say the same for members of Antifa and the "mostly peaceful" protests that occurred all during the summer of 2020. It was not people on the right who tried to burn down police stations and overrun federal buildings. Also, if Trump had won the 2020 election, Washington would have burned. Washington business owners were not boarding up their businesses on election day 2020, fearing what would happen if Biden won.
You sure are quick to taunt me with insults. It is disappointing.
So, Lisa, were you the hoodie who planted the pipebombs in DC outside the DNC & RNC on January 4, 2021?
Not sure if this is disingenuous or merely ignorant. (Plus, "nuclear option' is not a verb.) Harry Reid and the Democrats did not end the filibuster to make it "easier" to confirm non-SCOTUS federal judges and executive; they did it merely to make it possible to confirm them at all. Republicans were blocking all Obama nominations to certain judgeships. (Notably the extremely important DC Circuit, which had three vacancies at the time; the court had a majority of Republican appointed judges which would have flipped with the confirmation of three Democratic nominees. For this reason, Republicans were blockading any and all nominations to that court and making noises about simply elimination those three seats.) Similarly, Republicans were blocking any and all nominations to lead certain federal agencies that they disliked which, because of the structure of some of these agencies, made it virtually impossible for them to function without a leader, which was the Republican objective.
And McConnell did not "rightly" decline to end the legislative filibuster during the Drumpf regime out of some heartfelt principle. Since the GQP had no legislative agenda beyond tax cuts (doable through reconciliation), ACA repeal (ditto, but failed), and judicial nominations ( filibuster not applicable), he had no need to eliminate it and every incentive to retain it against a future Democratic majority. He would have eliminated it in a heartbeat if it inconvenienced Republicans (as he did for SCOTUS nominations) and will in the future if necessary (as in a national abortion ban).
I understand that nuclear option is not a verb. I liked the way the "nuclear optioned" sounded. It amused me. It is the same way I refer to Covid19 as The Covid.
You are correct that Republicans made it very difficult for the Democratic congress to confirm judges and appoint people to run the endless three-letter acronym departments of the Executive branch. If the filibuster had not been negated by Reid and later for Supreme Court judges by McConnell, between GOP and Democratic obstructionism, we would be in a net deficit of judges, and much of the machinery of the Executive branch would be rudderless. A lack of judges would not be good, but I think the Executive branch could do with some attrition no matter who is president.
As for Mitch McConnell's motivations, I cannot say. I am glad he refused to end the filibuster for other legislation, and I am happy that the Democrats have not done it. Can you imagine? Congress would become a joke. Congress would be passing legislation back and forth like a tennis match.
Some on the right talk about a national abortion ban, just like many on the left talk about passing a federal right to abortion until just before the baby enters the birth canal. Both are bad ideas and (I think) would be considered unconstitual by the current Supreme Court. Roe was a terrible law, and that is why it was overturned. In my opinion, abortion laws are best decided at the state level.
Democrat congress.
Lisa, I think what you're missing about the filibuster is that it was a holdover from a very different time and moreover one upon a time it was used very infrequently. McConnell and company changed that purely as a way to hold onto power as the GOP lost 7 of the last popular votes for President. There's nothing pretty about it.
As you say you come here to hear perspectives different from yours so I'll note that what you describe as "a tennis match" is government doing the job they were elected to do by popular majorities. You prefer much smaller government that is stymied from doing anything that moves us forward. Fine. But that is a minority opinion. You should not get to force that view on the rest of us through archaic conventions like the filibuster.
Meant to say 7 of the last 8 .
I’m happy to refer to you as the “other side”. Or perhaps it’s best we just admit we have nothing in common whatsoever. With that in mind, why would I bother to consider your concerns at all? Let’s go there.
Why are you filled with hate towards me? I guess you like your echo chamber like the Fox News fanatics you insult. I am an American, just like you. I love this country as you do. I hope for the future of this country that we can find some common ground. But maybe not. I have been a reader of Kevin Drum from the days before he wrote for Mother Jones. Why? Because I like to challenge my world view.
Fuck off troll.
I guess your definition of a troll is anyone who challenges your point of view. Sad.
I don’t know you. You assume I should have some affinity for you because you are an “American” just like me. I do not. This is the point I’m making… for me, there is no such thing as an “American”. Most (all?) Democratic politicians are invested in maintaining this fiction that we have a nation. Many Republican politicians are quite happy to tear it apart (see 1/6/21). There are no policy disputes which justly voting for Republicans. Not anymore. A vote for republicans is a vote to destroy what’s left of this country.
Anyway… commenter Austin tells me to fuck off too. I guess we have that in common! 😂
Hate respect hate, yo.
They tightened eligibility a bit -- https://bityl.co/EohT -- to stave off some of the potential legal challenges. It'll probably survive now, otherwise, SCOTUS will be seen as legislating from the bench.
That consideration might have counted when John Roberts was still alive, but now that he's dead man sitting? He was still somebody back when they reviewed the ACA and he got them not to kill it completely.
These days, though, Alito and the theocrats are so full of themselves, and so gleefully sh*tting on both their predecessors and their colleagues, I tend to think that's looking like a 50-50 bet at best.
I think most people would suggest that there are only 3 strict ideologues in SCOTUS: Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch. Of the remaining three conservatives, Roberts is the most flexible.
Agreed, that's probably the consensus right now. Gorsuch can be a little bit of a wild card but I guess mainly when it comes to federal authority in the western states. Kavanaugh has seemed to try to find mediating language sometimes but that may not guide us so well on how he actually comes down on votes. My impression is that Barrett is pretty much a blank slate, too short a tenure to tell us much except that she's not a fan of implied rights.
But-- and here's the beauty of it all-- if the three amici stick together, they only need two of the others. So a lot of our hopes for mitigating damage may rest on competing egos among the maybe-solid three.
Are you implying that Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson are not ideologues?
Kagan and Sotomayor aren't. If you read Kagan's and Sotomayor's opinions, they tend to focus on (1) the hypocrisy, and/or (2) the self-contradictory nature, and/or (3) the broken logic of the conservative majority opinions.
Jackson hasn't given an opinion yet, so IDK how one would measure whether she is/isn't.
Tell me why I'm wrong.
I find Thomas and Alito to be very logical. Especially Thomas. I disagree with Kagan's decisions, but I can sometimes understand her arguments. Sotomayor - I find her reasoning and questioning to be odd. But I don't have a concrete example to give you, so maybe we can discuss future decisions. Roberts is a hot mess. What I find reassuring is that despite their differences, the judges on the Supreme Court manage to be friends.
If you find those two to be logical you must be living in the universe where Spock has a beard.
Maybe Alito will be so happy over Sweet Giorgia Brownshirt seizing power in Italy that he'll retire from the US Supremes to return to the motherland to boost the regime's legal foundation.
Lol, they ain't no brownshirt anymore. They serve the globalist system.
In Italy, they were Blackshirts.
Tell that to Meadowlark Lemon & Curly Brown.
The wannabeaNazi population is desperate to try to paint everyone else with their own crimes.
Nazi???? Wrong. Global capitalism.....right.
If you put down the spoon you've been using to beat the tin bucket you have your head stuck in and used it for the purpose the doctor intended, as a spatula mundane, the swelling would decrease dramatically, if not instantaneously, and your swollen skull part could be extracted.
Tis what tis. Institutional liberals like yourself are morons. I lift the lies from the political landscape. That is why you fear me.
If you put down the spoon you've been using to beat the tin bucket you have your head stuck in and used it for the purpose the doctor intended, as a spatula mundani, the swelling would decrease dramatically, if not instantaneously, and the swollen skull part could be extracted.
Go fuck off with Lisa.
Cook can have this one if he can point to similar high dudgeon over, say, a certain prior occupant repurposing military appropriations to go to a big wall. Ferris? Anyone?
Cook is a traitor to America.
No lies detected. But he's a Brit, anyway, innit?
Deport his ass to Knifecrime Island.
Like anybody cares. If the original Biden plan had removed private plans, it isn't even news.
Is the student loan program unconstitutional? I doubt it, but it's possible.
I assume Kevin means he doubts the program is unconstitutional given a reasonable interpretation by nonpartisan judges acting in good faith.
He's not really suggesting this court has a majority to uphold the president's executive order. Is he? Not a chance the debt forgiveness policy survives the black-robed, movement conservative activists. Not a chance.
Yeah the correct phrasing is will the court find a way to dump it and fuck me over personally. Answer is a probably!
Is even the neoconservative Jasper in Boston admitting GQP jurisprudence is Aileens Cannon all the way down?
Isn't the Republicans' favorite theory of government, the "Unitary Executive Theory," pretty much summed up by saying that a President is an elected dictator, who has the power to use the government to do anything he wants unless and until he is impeached and removed from office? Or does that only apply if the President in question is a Republican?
That's the secret codicil. A president's powers within the executive branch are plenary and every act of every executive functionary is an act of the president, BUT no Democratic president may actually exercise said powers.
*Democrat president
Correct.
Asking for performers to stop performing performative performances is a performance in futility.
plus 1 for alliteration....
Is this about Lizzo defiling James Madison's crystal flute?
Tucker Carlsen is offended because Chrystal Flute is the escort he pays 5k twice a month, and she said it was her real name, so obviously someone's sending him a message.
Heh. Fifty points to Gryffindor.
So you think maybe you'll be a prostitute / to pay for your lessons / you're learning the flute /
The ladies wouldn't pay you very much for this / looks like you'll never be a concert flautist
From
https://youtu.be/7wqfcwgT0Ds
Defiling what is sacred is what America was founded upon.
Offer may not be valid in Massachusetts Bay Colony.
We can ignore, oif not call out and insult, their opinions on this after the backed Trump... and still continue to back Trump.
Is there some html script that allows a poster to be selected and then screened out of a thread? My scrolling finger is getting tired.
There was something called a pie filter, replaced the commenters' input with thoughts on pie, but I think it only worked on Disqus.
OT: Ukrainians have taken back Lyman. Russian military bloggers suggest that Putin ordered forces to hold onto Lyman just so that it wouldn't fall on the day of his dog and pony show, at the expense of an unknown number of Russian soldiers' lives. And they're pissed about it. Yet, they're still confident that Russia will retake all the lands they've lost, just as soon as Russia declares an all war and mobilizes all of Russia and the economy.
National Review... it is boring (the NR). Ideological knee-jerkers are always boring.
He can’t eliminate student debt just by thinking about it? I’d say that’s a minimum skill for a tyrant.
Can anyone remember & count - all of the trump administration's congressional crises, executive orders, Hatch Act violations, as well as just immoral actions of trump & his "best people?"
Even the best fact-checker have difficulty with the most disgusting administration our country has survived so far.
Wonder if McConnell would still publicly claim to be prepared to vote for trump again. I almost feel sorry for those enablers, Mitch & Elaine.
Party. Over. Country.
White. Makes. Right.
Just think how terrible it must be to be as angry and hate-filled as they are.
Well, I'm sure they all find it exhilerating. Rage is a well-known addiction... and the secret to the success of Faux Newz.
Something tells me Charlie Cooke wasn't all up in arms about Trump re-directing Defense Department appropriations away from things like housing and supplies for our troops and redirecting it towards his stupid border wall boondoggle, which Congress never authorized. Which was just as lose-your-shit illegal as Biden's loan forgiveness gambit, if you want to be technical about it.
Bingo.
Meh, both sides engage in such rhetoric to bolster their positions. It's best not to get caught up in it. As you say, it will have its day in court. That is enough.
What I find more interesting is that everybody ignores the root cause of the student loan fiasco just to put a bandaid on the gaping wound. 10k-20k of forgiveness doesn't fix the problem; it only delays it.
In my own, admittedly amateur, research, the problem seems to stem from making these loans unbankruptable. For the poor who get caught in this trap, this is akin to slavery. They can't pay, and so the crisis escalates, with their debt hanging over their heads for the rest of their lives. Sure the rich would abuse the bankruptcy law, as they abuse all the laws, but that doesn't excuse screwing over the poor just to shut down the rich. We should be fixing the law instead to minimize such abuses.
Biden could direct the bureaucratic legal system to not object to student loan forgiveness during bankruptcy provided the person in question is poor enough. This is a form of "prosecutorial discretion", and while it would still be challenged in court there is a history of court precedents supporting this concept, meaning it would be likely to succeed too.
But I guess straight-up forgiveness is more visible and thus wins more political points than an attempt to solve the problem.
Couldn't agree more about making college loans unexpungeable in bankruptcy (as I warned my students about the day after it was enacted but got no reaction at the time). It's the real-life face of modern debt peonage, like sharecroppers in the 19C.
But I don't understand what you're proposing. Bankruptcy courts are bound by enacted laws and court precedent, and executive orders have no relevance to what they do since they're a different branch. I'm no expert but I'm not sure it's the feds who are the ones hounding people about these debts and pushing them into bankruptcy. To the extent that it is, he might be able to order them to stop, but he might not, depending on how the laws are written. I'd think it's the private lenders who want both the loan payoffs and the federal guarantee behind the loans.
The guarantee is supposed to enable lower-than-market interest rates and delayed and stretched-out payments, and making these loans unexpungeable in bankruptcy was supposed to protect the government from having to step in and pay off all the discharged loans people were going to stick Uncle Sam with when they went bust. That wasn't a stupid thing to anticipate but the cure has ruined quite a big number of people's lives. Time to look for an alternative.
It's not true you can't discharge student loans by declaring bankruptcy, BTW. It's just much, much harder than it used to be; you have to say, get yourself declared mentally incompetent, to name one example I've seen successfully deployed.
Not an option for most people, of course.
Too funny! Right winger scream about "tyrany!!!", but that's what they want in a leader, as exemplifed by Orban, Putin, Bolsonaro, and that former guy (a weak man's impression of a "strongman").
Has anyone ever noticed that an irrational person is rational to themselves and views a rational person that disagrees as irrational? So the question is, how do you tell the difference?
Tell them both to pee on the electric fence. The one that does is the irrational one.
Tell them both there's a way to tell the difference. The one that says "no there isn't" is the irrational one.
Speaking of dictators…
Former President Donald Trump raised the specter of political violence Friday with a fresh attack on Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, suggesting that the GOP leader had “a death wish” because he had voted to approve legislation sponsored by Democrats. In a post on his Truth Social website, Trump asked if McConnell had supported the unspecified bills “because he hates Donald J. Trump, and he knows I am opposed to them.”
“He has a DEATH WISH,” Trump added.
I know most who comment here hate trump, but… do you really understand the risk he is to all of us? I really don’t think people like Mr. Drum have come to terms with the danger. He still thinks we can coexist with republicans. I do not.
You left out Demented Donnie misnaming one of his only full-term cabinet Secretaries, Linda Chao, as Coco Chow.
I cannot wait for Monday when KKKlay Travis n' Kukk Sexton will somehow pin this racialist taunt on the Democrat Party. Prolly with a feint to the "beloved in soiboi culture" album Pinkerton, by Weezer.
...Siri, play "El Scorcho"....
https://youtu.be/okthJIVbi6g
Oh the tyranny!
Marjorie Taylor Greene: "I am not going to mince words with you all. Democrats want Republicans dead and they have already started the killings."
Well… I do agree that the only good republicans (and Russians) are dead ones! But I certainly wouldn’t waste my time on them. I wonder who all these good democrats are going around killing republicans.
Wouldn't MTG tell us that all aborted fetuses would surely have voted republican?
Much as George W. Bush kept us safe on 9/11/01, the GQP's pro-family policies would keep the uterine homicides safe.
His name was Caighler Ellingsen!
Sure, he looked like a genderfluid soiboi cuck, but he was MAGA AF FR FR. & a shitlib in a pickup killed him.
AAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUGH! You go too far, sir. Please take it down a notch or two.
I wouldn't be me if I weren't a tenth as witty as GG ALLIN or half as sexual as Tesco Vee.
The President doesn't have the mental capacity to be a competent tyrant. However, his FBI and Justice Department are certainly acting in a tyranny-adjacent manner. Lengthy pre-trial confinement for J6 arrestees; using the FBI to investigate Ashley Biden's diary with very heavy-handed tactics; raiding the former President's home. Legal and civility-based norms have been jettisoned.
Got a problem with a former President withholding documents? Sue him. Daughter of the President loses her diary and it winds up with a journalist who ultimately turns turns it in to the authorities? Not a case for DOJ involvement. A bunch of knuckleheads riot/trespass in the Capitol? If you got a case, beyond a reasonable doubt for a plot to overthrow the Constitution, THROW THE BOOK AT THEM! But don't let them rot in jail for prolonged periods and then charge trespass.
This is the United States of America, and if the President isn't too far gone in dementia, he should rein in those who abuse law enforcement authority.
Piss Off, Troll.
You seem nice.
Nicer than you are, dude.
Surprised you didn't take a moment to grieve for Rep. Walorski's survivors, toward whom joebiden was so cruel.
Just to take one of your many erroneous assertions, neither the FBI nor the Justice Department was responsible for lengthy pre-trial confinement for J6 arrestees. It was the judiciary that did that.
If there is probable cause for raiding the former president's home, which there was, why shouldn't the former president's home be raided?
I'll be hanging around, thank you.
I think you might at least be an improvement on Sture Stuhl, but I still miss Mac Gruber.
Former Federal prosecutor here. The J6 judges did not, sua sponte, refuse bail. The the Assistant US Attorney, a DOJ official -- has to make a request to deny bail.
Where else am I in error?
Biden is a tyrant in Donbass. He rules it like a Persian satrap.