The Government Accountability Office has rendered a decision on the actions of the Obama Administration in swapping five Taliban leaders for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl earlier this year. At the time on CNN and other forums, I noted that President Obama had again openly violated federal law which requires at least 30 days of advance notice in such a change. The GAO agreed and found that the Administration clearly violated federal law. I recently testified (here and here and here and here) and wrote a column on President Obama’s increasing circumvention of Congress in negating or suspending U.S. laws. As in past cases, defenders of the President insist that any violation was done for the best of reasons, but that is a dangerous rationalization for any violation of law. Presidents always insist that they are acting with the best of motivations when they violate laws. We remain a nation of laws and presidents do not have the option of not complying when the laws are inconvenient or counterproductive. Notably, it was not just one law that President Obama violated in taking this unilateral action.
In this case, the duty to inform Congress could have been easily satisfied and it was not even necessary to violate the law in order to carry out the exchange. It seems more likely that this was done for political purposes to avoid opposition in Congress.
The GAO found the obvious violation and added that the Pentagon broke another law by using funds that were not technically available. The GAO also concluded that the Obama Administration violated the Antideficiency Act, barring spending by agencies above the amount of money that Congress has obligated.
The appropriations dimension is another example of how the Administration has circumvented the “power of the purse” which is often cited as the core congressional check on presidential power. Indeed, as I have discussed in recent testimony, the Administration has repeatedly shown that this power is becoming something of a constitutional myth (despite the fact that it is often cited as a reason not to recognize standing by members in challenging unlawful acts of a president). The law in this case was part of a Defense spending bill states that no money can be used to transfer Guantanamo prisoners to another country “except in accordance” with a law requiring that the secretary of Defense to notify key congressional committees at least 30 days before such a transfer.
In this case, the swap occurred May 31 but the committees were only notified between May 31 and June 2. The finding also puts to rest the spin put out by advocates that Congress was notified by the White House.
When some of use raised the violation of federal law as obvious at the time, many supporters of the White House insisted that there was no violation and that this was another partisan attack. However, the GAO found the violation “clear and unambiguous” and said that the Administration was dismissive of “the significance of the express language” in the law.
The report comes several months after the Obama administration released five senior Taliban members from Guantanamo Bay in exchange for Bergdahl, who had disappeared in 2009. Under the exchange terms, the five Taliban are to remain in Qatar for a year.
Lawmakers at the time complained about the security implications of releasing Taliban leaders from Guantanamo, but also about the late notification by the Pentagon that they were going forward with the swap.
In response, the Administration is saying that the law, which President Obama signed, was trumped by his inherent national security powers — an all-too-familiar argument for civil libertarians. The Administration insisted that the law “would have interfered with the executive’s performance of two related functions that the Constitution assigns to the president: protecting the lives of Americans abroad and protecting U.S. service members.” There are clearly good-faith arguments about inherent executive powers that have been made. Yet, even if you accept that the President can simply ignore such laws, misappropriating money is not part of any plausible claim of an inherent or absolute executive function. This is the type of dismissive Nixonian attitude that raises concerning about the rise of an uber-presidency in the United States.
Source: WSJ
Here is another funny cartoon:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-23/isis-just-crossed-line
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
John,
I found another of your comments in the spam filter,
Laser – I am a registered Independent, the largest party designation in Arizona. And was I wrong? You can make an ad hominem attack, but there is nothing behind it. You are better than that.
AY;
He’s not Manziel; but the GOP rule book says all contrary viewpoints
are (in Ying’lish terms) nothing but Schlemiel’s…
(which – of course – is contradictory; for who would argue with ineffective’s)
That will be 15k please…
Paul,
I can write it anyway I want…. Who do you think you are…. Johnny manziel….
AY – it does go to your knowledge of all things military. And although I am usually not the grammar police, that was just too out of bounds for the point you were trying to make. Sorry you took offense to your obvious errors being corrected.
Heres a list of journalist killed during Iraq…http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Journalists_killed_while_covering_the_Iraq_War
Raff,
I keep up with the military times on a weekly basis…. So far there has been no court Marshall of Bowe….. Though 60% think he should be…. I did read where a two bird general got court marshaled and retired at a colonel…..
AY – if you are following the military times, you would know it is court-martial and a two-star general.
davidm2575: “A message was sent that we will negotiate and trade our prisoners for theirs.”
Bigger than that. ISIS follows and perhaps pushes further the Taliban playbook. Like it or not, America is the leader of the free world. Releasing the worst of the Taliban leaders in our custody sent a clear reverberating message to ISIS, Taliban and, more significantly, the people of the region about American and therefore Western (led by American) permission to the terrorist political regimen.
happypappies: “We all know that Obama is Bush Lite … I respect him more for behaving kind of like a Neocon.”
I discussed this subject under a previous post, starting here:
http://jonathanturley.org/2014/08/12/hillary-clinton-criticizes-obamas-foreign-policies-and/#comment-1258816
Neocon = liberal. A neocon is simply a Wilsonian liberal in the FDR/Truman/JFK lineage relabeled. Neocon/liberal is the modern Democrats’ heritage.
As such, the Democrats won the Presidency with a fundamental lie about Bush and themselves.
One, with the “neocon” misdirection, the Democrats lied that their essentially American liberal foreign policy outlook differs from Bush’s liberal reaction to 9/11.
Two, the Democrats lied that Operation Iraqi Freedom was based on lies and illegal when, in fact, OIF was right on the law and justified on the policy that was carried forward by Bush from Clinton.
@Neocons as Wilsonian Liberals? lol idk Neocon Neolib what’s the difference. When they are protecting our “interests” and not our country – it gets complicated. We haven’t had true “Liberals” since there were Classical Liberals in the form of Adam Smith and his Divine Invisible Hand
Second posting MISSING here.
Please retrieve from the filter.
G. Mason,
You said, “the Founding Fathers were against slavery.”
The following excerpt demonstrates the second phase of Lincoln’s, et. al., overall plan to prosecute the Civil War and compassionately repatriate the freed slaves. Unfortunately, Lincoln was assassinated.
The ‘Great Emancipator’ and the Issue of Race
Abraham Lincoln’s Program of Black Resettlement
By Robert Morgan
Many Americans think of Abraham Lincoln, above all, as the president who freed the slaves. Immortalized as the “Great Emancipator,” he is widely regarded as a champion of black freedom who supported social equality of the races, and who fought the American Civil War (1861-1865) to free the slaves.
While it is true that Lincoln regarded slavery as an evil and harmful institution, it is also true, as this paper will show, that he shared the conviction of most Americans of his time, and of many prominent statesmen before and after him, that blacks could not be assimilated into white society. He rejected the notion of social equality of the races, and held to the view that blacks should be resettled abroad. As President, he supported projects to remove blacks from the United States.
“If all earthly power were given me,” said Lincoln in a speech delivered in Peoria, Illinois, on October 16, 1854, “I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution [of slavery]. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native land.” After acknowledging that this plan’s “sudden execution is impossible,” he asked whether freed blacks should be made “politically and socially our equals?” “My own feelings will not admit of this,” he said, “and [even] if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not … We can not, then, make them equals.”5
One of Lincoln’s most representative public statements on the question of racial relations was given in a speech at Springfield, Illinois, on June 26, 1857.6 In this address, he explained why he opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which would have admitted Kansas into the Union as a slave state:
There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races … A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas …
Racial separation, Lincoln went on to say, “must be effected by colonization” of the country’s blacks to a foreign land. “The enterprise is a difficult one,” he acknowledged,
but “where there is a will there is a way,” and what colonization needs most is a hearty will. Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest. Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and, at the same time, favorable to, or, at least, not against, our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be.
What Chuck said.
Secondly, Nick, Did I miss a court martial decision on the issue of Bergdahl’s alleged desertion?
Charlie wrote: “Who was hurt by this violation? No one.”
I think James Foley was hurt. A message was sent that we will negotiate and trade our prisoners for theirs. I think many of our servicemen were hurt because they view Bergdahl as a deserter. If he had followed the law, it might be that Congress would have blocked the President’s detrimental action.
Well put Otteray!
Annie (me thinks that U.S. liberals are considered hi-jinx by the Lord and his knights of the realm; and are (therefore) held to a stricter standard on babble & banter rules of restriction.
Nothing said – about crimes of venal most dred – is support thereof
instead!
Steve H;
Your banter & questions are just as obtuse (and probably as bias) as that of the Professors posturing.
First of all – tyranny, cronyism and corruption (of our federal court and agencies) – is most certainly a “Constitutional” question.
Especially when fed judges are betraying their oaths to protect it.
(U.S. Sup Ct – Cooper v Aaron 358 U.S. 1958)
Secondly;
Your banter as if fact, is also disingenuous – on the issue of “8 years ago”. Romney ran in 2008 and we helped squash that rather easily. Then no one cared. In 2012, I didn’t have the monies to attack him properly; and thus he prevailed (for a time). Mitt’s hubris is even so brazen/flagrant – that he did confess (in his film) “we kinda had to steal the [GOP] nomination”.
It’s NOT an 8 year old issue; but a current one. Romney’s running in 2016.
Finally, I’ve sued Romney, Bain Capital and Goldman Sachs, for Racketeering – as “Private Attorney General”, in Los Angeles Fed Ct (case 2:13-cv-7738); which is “currently” before the 9th Circuit; (because another willfully obtuse {purportedly a Constitutional sworn protectorant}) has given an oath that there’s no validity to my case.
Really strange, being that we have “confessions” to fraud on the court!
People are dead in our case (eToys shareholder Robert Alber had to shoot/kill career criminal Michael Sesseyoff in Kingman AZ {after he turned down a bribe and his life was threatened}. Marty Lackner was involved in Petters Ponzi {that Bain Cap & Goldman Sachs are involved in – multiple ways}, Marty Lackner was never indicted and the feds state Petters Ponzi is a $3.7 Billion scheme; but 2 parties confessed laundering more than $10 Billion each {Larry Reynolds did so WHILE in WISTEC}. Marty (reportedly) committed suicide and was the brother of MN Asst. U.S. Attorney J. Lackner {head of criminal division}; which goes a long way in explaining (possibly) how Petters got away with it for decades and WHY the feds are stating a $40 billion plus Ponzi is only $3.7 billion. U.S. Attorneys (Colm Connolly -is THE “retroactive” secret of Romney & Asst U.S. Attorneys involved; and the DOJ is scared/embarrassed to bring a case.
With the Public Corruption Task Force being shut down (Los Angeles);
and (reportedly) career federal agents being threatened to silence.
(See “Shake-up roils federal prosecutors” by Scott Glover L.A. Times)
How, in your genius of a mindset (condescending as it may be towards me) – are these issues (current) so draconian to you (and the Professor) that they’re deemed unworthy and the exchange to free an American is top bill?
Just to remind you – and the Lord of this realm – the 1st Amendment is; Laws not to assault the right of free speech, freedom of press (and I’m pressing here), nor establish rights of [a particular] religion (Hobby Lobby notwithstanding – {I guess}) and/or right to protest peacefully against government to address grievances.
How is this banter on a flea bite issue of Bergdahl;
more important that a RICO boss so powerful – he may become POTUS?
And be able to hand-pick that “friendly” USAG Adelson $100 million sought!
I’m just sayin…….
I don’t like it, but what he did was right, even if not perfectly legal. If the speed limit is 65 and the car in front of me is doing 64, it is illegal for me to pass it at more than 65. Yet I will do so and no one will be hurt by me breaking that law. Who was hurt by this violation? No one. However, I am canceling my Qatar vacation plans for the next year. ;/)
Clearly the president has taken to heart Richard Nixon’s comment: “If the president does it, it’s not illegal.”
The beheaded journalist paid the price for a group of murders being allowed to wrap themselves in religion and get a pass no matter what they do. We are constantly told we must be tolerant; we must understand they haven’t had time to evolve! They have had millennia. We need to get out of the ME. Let the Saudis with all their money solve the ISIS problem.
As to Obama, I doubt that he is the most “illegal president” ever but I am disturbed and disgusted that the Democrats simply refuse to oppose his excesses but then neither do the Republicans. They love spying and billions for weapons. McCain even loved ISIS in Syria. Every so often they jump up and complain but only on stuff like getting this soldier back or some other hot button claim. They are all too busy making the world safe for corporations.
@happypappies
This is a more complete link to the article you cited:
http://www.psychologyandsociety.org/previousissues/?id=17#A_Psycho-Historical_Analysis_of_Adolf_Hitler_The_Role_of_Personality_Psychopathology_and_Development_78
I read the 6 page pdf. The authors are entitled to their opinion. I do not share most of it. My father had an extensive library on Hitler, including many contemporaneous books by non – Germans. I remember the Langer one, which was a printout maybe, because it said Hitler ate poop. I asked my father about it and he said to take it with a grain of salt because the CIA(?) was behind it and they wanted to portray Hitler as crazy as they could to help the war effort. You know, saving the world from a madman.
As I have explained above, one may utilize whatever method one likes
to figure it out, but I think we are better served by trying to look at the govermental aspects of it. I doubt that one would find Oedipal Complexes and paranoid schizophrenia diagnosed applicable to the millions of Muslims who want to finish what Hitler started.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
@Squeaky 1) I don’t think Millions of Muslims want to have a blood bath in the way that Hitler did. I think the situation is completely different and needs to be viewed as such. These days having the Internet you should have some contact with some of these terrible “Muslims” 2) Bringing up the CIA saying Hitler ate Poop – probably something stupid on the History Channel maybe? Or is it something else?? idk I never ran across it in my extensive studies. You can be sure he was Charismatic as many of these Classical Narcissists I was talking about. Just because you are “not impressed” with an analogy does not mean there is no truth to it. Hitler had a very complicated mind and that was how he was able to direct a people as highly developed as the Germans were once again into a state of greatness. To compare that to what is going on in Iraq or the Gaza strip is ludicrous in the extreme. I never said Hitler lacked intellect. You have to be smart to be crazy. That is what is so interesting about it.