This morning I will be testifying as the lead witness before the House Rules Committee on the authorization of litigation by the House of Representatives to challenge the unilateral actions of President Obama. The authorization makes it clear that the House will focus on the ACA changes. The hearing will begin at 10 am in H-313 in The Capitol building. It will be aired live on C-Span 3.
I will be the lead witness followed by Elizabeth Price Foley, Professor of Law, Florida International University College of Law, then Simon Lazarus, Senior Counsel, Constitutional Accountability Center, and Walter Dellinger III, Partner, O’Melveny & Meyers LLP.
I would like to thank my incredible GW team for their proofing of the testimony. I have been in federal court and then federal mediation so this testimony was a crash project and, despite my getting the draft out on the day of the deadline, the team did a marvelous job late into the night. So thanks again to Claire Duggan, Michael Jones, Ann Porter, Nathan Richardson, and Conrad Risher.
Here is the testimony: Testimony.Turley.HouseRulesCommittee
“Elizabeth Price Foley’s written testimony from today” (requested by Bob, Esq.)
http://docs.house.gov/meetings/RU/RU00/20140716/102507/HMTG-113-RU00-Wstate-FoleyE-20140716.pdf
http://docs.house.gov/meetings/RU/RU00/20140716/102507/HMTG-113-RU00-Wstate-FoleyE-20140716.pdf
Where can one find Elizabeth Price Foley’s written testimony from today?
J.T.’s testimony was an excellent summation of his posts here.
But Elizabeth Price Foley’s testimony was laser like in its focus on the standing issue.
Superb.
@bettykath
Do yuh really think the way to judge whether or not a president exceeds the scope of his authority is to COUNT the number of executive orders??? OMG!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Jonathan Turley & Elizabeth Price Foley
Kicking ass and taking names.
@messpoo
Man from humble position falls in with Chicago political machine and rises to Senator then President possessing no discernible job skills and no record beyond speechmaking, which speeches have squat to do with his conduct.
There! Fixed it for you!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
So, has it has come down to government by lawsuit … like in 1803 … (Marbury v Madison).
Groundhog Day Deja Vu all over again.
Suicide watch.
Really, it is not question of lawsuit. I have always questioned the standing of both plaintiff and defendant in this idea of a civil action.
What they want to do is properly an impeachment.
I believe they will have all the powers that a court would have in that process.
Considering that Obama has used executive orders far fewer times than his predecessors, I see this as political theater and JT is on the wrong side of this.
“I’m afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security.”unquote” anon It very well could, but Boehner’s lawsuit has nothing to do with national security. It is limited to certain mandates of the affordable care act.
Squeeky:
“total pos Obama and his crowd were.”
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Man from humble beginnings rises to become US Senator and then the first African-American president of the most powerful country on earth. He does so in a landslide against economically entrenched interests and a war hero who is also a US Senator.
Yep, total pos.
Now, Squeeky, tell us all about you.
A little food for thought:
Jim Garrison, in 1967:
quote”1967 interview of Jim Garrison, District Attorney of New Orleans, who tried to prosecute one of the conspirators in the coup d’etat of November 22, 1963:
PLAYBOY: Many of the professional critics of the Warren Commission appear to be prompted by political motives: Those on the left are anxious to prove Kennedy was murdered by a conspiracy within the establishment; and those on the right are eager to prove the assassination was an act of “the international Communist conspiracy.” Where would you place yourself on the political spectrum — right, left of center?
GARRISON: That’s a question I’ve asked myself frequently, especially since this investigation started and I found myself in an incongruous and disillusioning battle with agencies of my own Government. I can’t just sit down and add up my political beliefs like a mathematical sum, but I think, in balance, I’d turn up somewhere around the middle. Over the years, I guess I’ve developed a somewhat conservative attitude — in the traditional libertarian sense of conservatism, as opposed to the thumbscrew-and-rack conservatism of the paramilitary right — particularly in regard to the importance of the individual as opposed to the state and the individual’s own responsibilities to humanity. I don’t think I’ve ever tried to formulate this into a coherent political philosophy, but at the root of my concern is the conviction that a human being is not a digit; he’s not a digit in regard to the state and he’s not a digit in the sense that he can ignore his fellow men and his obligations to society. I was with the artillery supporting the division that took Dachau; I arrived there the day after it was taken, when bulldozers were making pyramids of human bodies outside the camp. What I saw there has haunted me ever since. Because the law is my profession, I’ve always wondered about the judges throughout Germany who sentenced men to jail for picking pockets at a time when their own government was jerking gold from the teeth of men murdered in gas chambers. I’m concerned about all of this because it isn’t a German phenomenon; it’s a human phenomenon. It can happen here, because there has been no change and there has been no progress and there has been no increase of understanding on the part of men for their fellow man. What worries me deeply, and I have seen it exemplified in this case, is that we in America are in great danger of slowly evolving into a proto-fascist state. It will be a different kind of fascist state from the one of the Germans evolved; theirs grew out of depression and promised bread and work, while ours, curiously enough, seems to be emerging from prosperity. But in the final analysis, it’s based on power and on the inability to put human goals and human conscience above the dictates of the state. Its origins can be traced in the tremendous war machine we’ve built since 1945, the “military-industrial complex” that Eisenhower vainly warned us about, which now dominates every aspect of our life. The power of the states and Congress has gradually been abandoned to the Executive Department, because of war conditions; and we’ve seen the creation of an arrogant, swollen bureaucratic complex totally unfettered by the checks and balances of the Constitution. In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society. Of course, you can’t spot this trend to fascism by casually looking around. You can’t look for such familiar signs as the swastika, because they won’t be there. We won’t build Dachaus and Auschwitzes; the clever manipulation of the mass media is creating a concentration camp of the mind that promises to be far more effective in keeping the populace in line. We’re not going to wake up one morning and suddenly find ourselves in gray uniforms goose-stepping off to work. But this isn’t the test. The test is: What happens to the individual who dissents? In Nazi Germany, he was physically destroyed; here, the process is more subtle, but the end results can be the same. I’ve learned enough about the machinations of the CIA in the past year to know that this is no longer the dreamworld America I once believed in. The imperatives of the population explosion, which almost inevitably will lessen our belief in the sanctity of the individual human life, combined with the awesome power of the CIA and the defense establishment, seem destined to seal the fate of the America I knew as a child and bring us into a new Orwellian world where the citizen exists for the state and where raw power justifies any and every immoral act. I’ve always had a kind of knee-jerk trust in my Government’s basic integrity, whatever political blunders it may make. But I’ve come to realize that in Washington, deceiving and manipulating the public are viewed by some as the natural prerogatives of office. Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I’m afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security.”unquote
bettykath:
“t depends on who writes the history book. A lot of shameful behavior by the powerful has gone down the memory hole, only occasionally brought to light to a few. In the meantime, many of the transgressors are treated as heroes.”
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I think the most dangerous person in any government is the one who says, “We must change.” Dangerous to the entrenched interests, that is.People remember them however.
@Annie
Those pumas were the first ones to realize what a total pos Obama and his crowd were. Slow learners are still making excuses for his failures and incompetencies. And “fat”??? Hardly.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Annie, “I think one day in history lessons, our grandchildren will learn to what lengths the GOP went to bring his President down, it will be seen as shameful period in American history.”
It depends on who writes the history book. A lot of shameful behavior by the powerful has gone down the memory hole, only occasionally brought to light to a few. In the meantime, many of the transgressors are treated as heroes.
Brian Harris:
““It is tempting to embrace rule by a single person who offers to govern alone to get things done. However, this is the very Siren’s call that our Founders warned us to resist. We remain a nation of laws and we have a court system designed to resolve such controversies. That is precisely where this authorization would take us and it is where these questions should be answered.”
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The weak spot in the argument offered by Professor Turley is what you’ve put your finger on. What the pure constitutionalists can’t answer is what do you do in a crisis when the system isn’t working. Take the immigration crisis or the problem of healthcare where folks are dying as examples.
When we had the exact same problem under the Articles of Confederation system we junked it under the guise of “reforming” it. That was clearly antithetical to the law of the Articles but necessary to keep the nation intact. We could have followed the law and watched the erosion happen but we realized that the necessity of self-preservation is the ultimate law.
You can decry necessity all you want to but American history shows it to be the most reliable motivator — and one whose excesses are readily excused by the grateful populace. To do otherwise in the face of real danger, insures we have a constitutional suicide pact.
Gary T:
“Wishful thinking never supercedes economic law.”
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Sure it does. It explains the fat cats on Wall Street still getting paid after about ruining the country. The suckers just keep coming though economic “law” says they should flee in droves.
Wishful thinking is what drives most institutions and props them up. As Glenn Fry says, “It’s the lure of easy money. It has a very strong appeal.”
Of what do the final words of the Testimony portend?
Those words are:
“It is tempting to embrace rule by a single person who offers to govern alone to get things done. However, this is the very Siren’s call that our Founders warned us to resist. We remain a nation of laws and we have a court system designed to resolve such controversies. That is precisely where this authorization would take us and it is where these questions should be answered.”
I find those words to be profoundly profound…
If, as stated above, we have a court system designed to resolve such controversies, why have such controversies not been resolved long ago?
An existential philosophy question has embraced my attention, as I am writing this.
By what authority is it decided what authority decides what to decide and how to decide it?
Authority by social consensus? Methinks terrible danger lurks that way.
My authority for so methinking? Richard Rashke, Escape from Sobibor: The Heroic Story of the Jews Who Escaped from a Nazi Death Camp, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1982.
It was a form of social consensus authority that led to the buliding of the death camp at Sobibor. It was a somewhat contrasting form of social consensus authority which enabled the escape, to the extent that the escape was actually enabled.
Obedience to Authority is the title of a book, first published in 1963, by the late Stanley Milgram,
In the work of carrying out his duties as President of the United States of America, by what method is President Obama to find his proper authority to properly carry out his obligations of office?
In the work of carrying out their duties as Members of Congress, by what method are the Members of Congress, both individually and as a group, to find their proper authority to properly carry out their obligations of office?
In the work of carrying out their duties as Members of the Judiciary, by what method are the Members of the Judiciary to find their proper authority to properly carry out their obligations of office?
If the obligations of office of the President are in adversarial conflict with the obligations of the office of Members of Congress, which are in adversarial conflict with the obligations of office of the Judiciary, which are in adversarial conflict with the obligations of the office of the President; by what authority may the adversarial relationships of our government offices be resolved?
The President cannot resolve the adversarial relationships without forsaking the adversarial rule of law. The Congress cannot resolve the adversarial relationships without forsaking the adversarial rule of law. The Judiciary cannot resolve the adversarial relationships without forsaking the adversarial rule of law.
Where is to be found, and by whom, a constitutional method for forsaking the adversarial rule of law, if it is the adversarial rule of law which is the only actual adversary the President, the Congress, the Judiciary, and the Public, can ever have?
I have read, read again, and intensively studied The Constitution of the United States of America. Nowhere in the Constitution have I come upon any mention of any Bar Association, nor of any right of any Bar Association as a private group, or as a cartel, to delimit who can engage in the practice of law, even if merely as a gaggle of marginally uninformed or informed members of the Public.
Perhaps I commit utter treason in being alive, yet I find that the only actually-valid authority for the rule of law which I have ever found, heard of, or been able to imagine, is only within individual human persons who are acting in accord with rigorously truthful honesty,individually, in accord with an uncorrupted conscience.
“I admire JT for his principles but I think it’s in service to the wrong people — people who would bring the government crashing down and sacrifice their fellow citizens just so they could claim a temporary and ultimately Pyrrhic victory over their opponent.” mespo Yes… I won’t be watching that not very intelligent tea partyer Pete Sessions chair the hearing. He is my former congressman. My daughter once asked him a question about stem cell research, and although he seemed to know very little about the science involved he knew he was against it.
Gary T:
“It was an ill conceived, magical thinking based thing in the first place. ”
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All it does is work — and save thousands of lives per year. Damn magical thinking!