What I'm Getting Mr. Trump For Christmas

thepilot.com:

OK, so I checked on Amazon and there is actually a book called “The U.S. Constitution for Dummies.” That settles the question of what I’m getting our president-elect for Christmas.

Because — I’ve got to tell you folks, some of Mr. Trump’s latest actions and public pronouncements make me wonder if he’s ever heard of the document, much less read it.

Take, for instance, this tweet he sent at 6 in the morning this past Tuesday: “Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag — if they do, there must be consequences — perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!”

For those of you wondering “where did that come from?” there was apparently a Fox News story that ran about that time on that issue, and of course, if Fox News does a story on it, the soon-to-be-leader of the fee world has to weigh in immediately.

The only problem is, it’s well-settled law that burning the U.S. flag as a means of protest is protected speech under that pesky First Amendment.

No less a conservative lion than the late Antonin Scalia stated that “If I were king, I wouldn’t go about letting people burn the American flag,” but that “we have a First Amendment which says that the right of free speech shall not be abridged.” Scalia, however he may have gritted his teeth at having to do so, signed on to a Supreme Court opinion striking down a Texas law that made flag-burning a criminal offense.

Note, however, that Trump, a man who’s said he wants justices “in the mold” of Justice Scalia, was suggesting that maybe he’d go further than imprisonment, to outright revocation of citizenship.

This raises the question of whether Mr. Trump is aware of the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” There’s no provision for the president or anyone else revoking someone’s citizenship, especially for acts protected under the First Amendment.

I’m sure some Trumpkins will fall back to their default defense, namely “But Hillary!” and point out that in 2005, then-Sen. Clinton co-sponsored a bill that would have criminalized the burning of the U.S. flag for the “primary purpose of intimidation or inciting immediate violence or for the act of terrorism.”

Well, let me say this about that: (1) She was wrong, and engaging in the kind of pandering that led me to describe her as “Republican Lite” for years; (2) The bill failed, as it bloody well should have; and (3) enjoy “But Hillary!” in the last few weeks you’ll be able to use it. Pretty soon she’s going to be off the public stage, and bringing her up will just seem more and more sad and desperate.

There are those who have suggested that PEOTUS is merely pumping out outrageous tweets to draw public and press attention away from the more serious issues posed by the many conflicts of interest posed by his business interests, both in America and abroad.

Here again, we invite Mr. Trump to peruse the Constitution, in particular the often-overlooked “Emoluments Clause” of Article One, which forbids anyone “holding any Office of Profit or Trust … without the Consent of the Congress,” from accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

Now, considering the negotiations and entanglements Mr. Trump and his worldwide enterprises have in foreign states and the desire of kings and princes to curry favor with the most powerful man in the free world, one would think that Mr. Trump might want to steer clear of not only actual conflicts of interest, but also of what we in the law biz call “the appearance of impropriety” in business concessions or payments from foreign leaders.

One might think that. But, as one of my old law professors used to say, one would be wrong. Mr. Trump has indicated that he’ll leave his businesses to be run by his children, but would “presents, Emoluments, Offices, or Titles” given to a Trump scion insulate Trump himself from charges of corruption? Let’s just say I have my doubts.

The House and Senate are all lovey-dovey right now, but Mr. Trump has said some pretty harsh things about the party he leads, and in particular about the Speaker of the House. Once the celebrations are over and the hard give-and-take of governing begins, he may be on thinner ice than he realizes.

So enjoy my gift of “The U.S. Constitution For Dummies,” Mr. President-Elect, and I hope that you read with close attention, particularly Article 2, Section 4. That’s the one about impeachment for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors.”

But Yeah, Hillary's the Crooked One

Opinion | thepilot.com

In September of 2013, the attorney general of Florida, Pam Bondi, publicly announced that her office was considering investigating the activities of Hillary Clinton.

A similar probe had already been commenced in New York. Bondi at the time had personally solicited campaign contributions from Clinton.

Six days after the AG’s office announced that they were “reviewing the allegations” against Clinton, the Clinton Family foundation wrote a check for $25,000 to the AG’s campaign, after which Bondi’s office announced that they’d decided not to pursue action against Clinton after all.

Pressed about the matter, Clinton claimed she never even spoke with the AG, a claim which was quickly revealed not to be true by Bondi’s own spokesperson.

The payments came to light only after the IRS levied a paltry $2,500 fine against the foundation because it had violated IRS rules about charities making political donations. It had also, according to a story in The Washington Post, “failed to disclose the large gift to the Internal Revenue Service, instead reporting that the donation was given to an unrelated group with a similar name — effectively obscuring the contribution.”

Just goes to show how corrupt and untrustworthy Hillary Clinton is, doesn’t it? Even though there’s no specific evidence of a quid pro quo, you have to admit it certainly raises questions about her integrity and her fitness for office.

And that ridiculous $2,500 fine? The entitled Hillary Clinton gets away with things the rest of us would go to jail for.

It’s an outrage that this story hasn’t been given front page status in every major newspaper and been the top story on every network. There really should be some Congressional hearings on the shady dealings of Hillary Rodham Clinton. ...

Oh, wait. Did I say Clinton? Sorry, my bad. The family foundation that donated 25 large to the campaign of Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi was actually the Donald J. Trump Foundation.

The probe being conducted in New York that Bondi said she’d been considering imitating was one into the fraudulent Trump University — you know, the scam where Trump, the Russian-backed presidential candidate with well-documented ties to the New York and Jersey mobs, the Russian Mafia, and the Hong Kong Triads, has an upcoming court date on a racketeering claim.

But everyone knows it’s Clinton that’s the crooked one.

Certainly, however, only some kind of liberal bigot would think there was any impropriety in a prosecutor who’s publicly said she’s considering a formal investigation receiving a large check from the potential target of that investigation six days after said announcement, then deciding “Nah, it’s not worth going after the guy.”

We know there’s nothing improper about it because both Bondi and Trump said so.

Oh, and Trump also gave $35,000 to Texas AG Greg Abbott, who’d already dropped a probe of Trump U after they shut down the operation in Texas and got out of town with the loot. Surely that was just a coincidence, too.

But, you know, Hillary’s the crooked one. After all, her foundation took contributions from, and then had meetings with, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who was working to aid poor people with so-called “micro-loans” in Bangladesh.

The Hillary group also met with the head of charitable giving for the cosmetics firm Estee Lauder, who was partnering with the State Department and USAID to fight AIDS, gender-based violence in Africa, and sexual slavery in Cambodia

Then there’s Wall Street mogul Stephen Schwarzman, whose Blackstone Group donated millions to “three Clinton Global aid projects ranging from the U.S. to the Mideast” and who got — well, the AP so-called “expose” on the Foundation that I’m quoting in this paragraph isn’t really clear about what he got. It says he was “one of several attendees” at a breakfast meeting with Clinton, that his wife “sat at Clinton’s table” at the Kennedy Center honors and later introduced Schwarzman, and that the State department was “working on a visa issue” for him.

Nothing in the story says what the “issue” was or what, if anything, Schwarzman got.

Those are the top three examples the AP pulled from all the others to suggest some sort of evil-doing on Clinton’s part. Some pretty shady characters, there to be sure, and some deep skullduggery going on, what with fighting AIDS and sexual slavery overseas and introducing people at the Kennedy Center and all.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump pays off a couple of attorneys general to get them to leave his Trump U scam alone after bragging that politicians do what he says because he gives them money.

He knows the system is broken because he helped break it. And you expect him to be less corrupt if he’s elected?

Way Too Interesting

 Opinion | thepilot.com

So now Donald Trump, the red-faced, bellowing bully who’s taken the Republican Party by storm, has won New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada — and now seems unstoppable in his quest to lead his party to the most crushing general election defeat in modern history this November.

It appears that all of us have fallen under the old curse “may you live in interesting times.” Because our nation’s political life has gotten way too interesting, and I’m thinking it’s going to get worse.

It’s already interesting that many of the same people who sniff disdainfully about liberals “calling people names” are cheering loudly for someone who’s made it the primary tactic of his campaign.

It’s already interesting that many of the same people who’ll have an attack of the vapors if someone says a swear word on TV or posts one on the Internet are supporting a man who says he’ll “bomb the [bad word] out of ISIS” and who gleefully repeats a vulgar slur over the microphone when one of this supporters uses it against one of his opponents.

It’s interesting that the people who have made Planned Parenthood their new bogeyman and who have demanded it be defunded and shut down are now lining up behind the man who said, out loud and in public, that that organization has done “some very good work.”

It’s interesting that the people who claim to honor the sanctity of marriage are so enamored of a man who left his first wife after a well-publicized affair with another woman, who then married and divorced said woman, and who is now married to a third woman 24 years his junior.

It’s interesting that the people who screech about Hillary Clinton’s “lies” are backing a man who claims that he wrote in 2000 that “we needed to take Osama bin Laden out” (he didn’t), a man who claims “our president wants to take in 250,000 from Syria” (the actual number is closer to 10,000), a man who claims the actual unemployment rate is “probably 28, 29, as high as 35. …. In fact, I even heard recently 42 percent” (even the highest measure of unemployment isn’t a quarter of that, and that measure — the so-called “U6,” which counts even the people who are working part time as unemployed — is the lowest it’s been since 2008).

The fact-checking site Politifact reports that it looked at “more than 70 Trump statements and rated fully three-quarters of them as Mostly False, False or ‘Pants on Fire,’” a designation they use for “a claim that is not only inaccurate but also ridiculous.”

Frankly, I don’t know how anyone can listen to a Trump supporter talk about Hillary Clinton’s “lies” without laughing in their face. I certainly can’t.

But I suspect the interesting times have just begun.

It’s going to be interesting when the people who completely flipped out when First Lady Michelle Obama wore a dress that exposed her bare arms try to tell us that it’s no big deal when Mr. Trump’s prospective first lady’s nude and semi-nude pics from her modeling career begin popping up on the Internet. (Actually, it’s already begun. Or so I hear.)

It’ll be interesting when the people who’ve jeered at the idea that American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens died because George W. Bush lied about WMDs to get us into the Second Iraq War throw their support behind the man who got on a debate stage on Feb. 13 and said exactly the same thing.

It’s going to be interesting when the people who were outraged at the idea that the Dear Leader Dubbya didn’t “keep us safe” because 9/11 happened on his watch, people who demanded that anyone who said such a thing be silenced, start waving flags at the Republican Convention in support of someone who said exactly that.

What’ll be most interesting if and when the GOP nominates Donald J. Trump to be president will be watching that party finally reveal itself as the party its most strident detractors have always claimed it is: a party not of conservative values, but of authoritarian ones. A party of hypocrites with no principles whatsoever other than “Us Good, You Bad.” A party of bigots, racists, willfully ignorant know-nothings, war-mongering imperialists, rage-junkies, paranoids, and brutal thugs for whom Vladimir Putin’s “my way or the gulag” style of governance is something to be admired and emulated.

That’s more interesting than I’d like to see things get, actually, but it looks like those are the interesting times in which we’re living.

Mad About the "Clinton Cash" Non-Scandal? Well Here's Your Alternative.

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

So, apparently, an upcoming book, the ponderously titled “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,” seems poised to set a record for the shortest time between a Clinton “scandal” breaking into national news and its complete collapse into a big ol’ pile of nothing.

Considering the resume of the author, a longtime professional Republican operative named Peter Schweizer, this book is clearly one of those right-wing tomes designed not to put forth any actual agenda or philosophy of governance, but to tear down the Democratic front-runner with an eye toward giving whichever piece of damaged goods is the last Republican standing a shot at the White House.

A pretty dismal strategy, to be sure. But fear not, good friends, I offer you a way out of the gloom. Bear with me for just a bit and I’ll show you.

First, let’s have a look at the allegations. They consist of the usual ginned-up “OK for me but not for thee” scandal-mongering guaranteed to make the hearts of the editors of Clinton-hating mainstream media outlets like The New York Times go pitter-pat.

The former “newspaper of record” breathlessly reported on allegations in the book that donations by officers of a Canadian company to the charitable Clinton Foundation led to the takeover of some American uranium mines by the Russian company that eventually acquired the Canadian company. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton got a big speaking fee of $500,000 from, not the Russian company or the Canadian one, but from “a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.” (I know, it’s convoluted, but most right-wing conspiracy theories are.)

Sounds pretty ominous, right? Sure, until you actually start thinking.

Before the book was even released, Schweizer was forced to admit, on talk show after talk show, that there was absolutely no evidence that there was criminal wrongdoing or any “direct action” by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to influence decisions on behalf of foreign companies that donated to the Clinton Foundation.

Even Fox News’ Chris Wallace had to point out that the decision on the uranium mines was approved by no fewer than nine federal agencies, not just the Clinton State Department. (No, Hillary Clinton did not control all nine of them.)

Pressed to provide evidence, any evidence, of the actual criminality he alleged, Schweizer was forced to fall back on the old right-wing dodge, “Well, I got nothin’. I’m just raising questions.”

Maybe, he suggested hopefully, some good old-fashioned congressional investigations with the customary Blizzard O’Subpoenas will turn something up to discredit Clinton. You know, like they did with Benghazi. Except wait — they didn’t.

Big Money is, without a doubt, a pernicious influence in American politics. But if you can say with a straight face that donations to the Clinton Foundation or big speaking fees paid to the Clintons are worthy of congressional investigation while turning a blind eye to Republican pols pandering to billionaires like Sheldon Adelson or the Koch brothers, then, let me put this as politely as I can: You’re full of it.

But, as promised, I offer you a way out of hypocrisy. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Oh, I know, I’ve pooh-poohed the idea of the junior senator from Vermont going for the Democratic nomination. Largely because he wasn’t, you know, a Democrat. But it seems as though that rumpled, lovable old coot is about to throw his hat into the ring with a “D” on it. And boy, does he hate the big money style of politics.

He’s called for a constitutional amendment “making it clear that the right to vote and the ability to make campaign contributions and expenditures belong only to real people, not corporations.”

And he’s “continuously supported the DISCLOSE Act, which would lower the veil of secrecy over campaign finance and prevent foreign corporations, individuals and governments from interfering in our political system.” In Bernie Sanders’ America, political marriage, so to speak, would be between one American man (or woman) and one candidate. Per election, at least.

So, Republicans and Democrats, wingnuts and manic progressives: If you’re disgusted with the Clintons for associating with big donors and getting big contributions, then won’t you join me in supporting the only candidate who actually has a plan to get that kind of big money out of politics?

I mean, surely, you don’t think big speaking fees or contributions to private foundations are only bad or suspicious when Bill or Hillary Clinton are involved, right? If that kind of perceived influence-peddling makes you mad, then Bernie’s the only logical choice, right?

Right?

It's Happening Again...

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

I tell you, this stupid “Emailgate” scandal may finally be the thing that drives me into the Hillary Clinton camp. As I’ve written several times, I’m not a huge fan of Mrs. Clinton, because she’s always come across to me as Republican Lite: all the corporate harlotry and knee-jerk hawkishness, but without the deranged raving about “legitimate rape,” gay marriage leading to bestiality, and Ebola-carrying Mexican immigrants with “thighs like cantaloupes” from toting huge bags of drugs.

All that said, I’ve frequently found myself, almost in spite of myself, rising to defend Hillary Clinton because of the sheer ridiculousness of the attacks on her from the right-wing propaganda complex, aka the national political media.

Last time she ran for president, we had the usual Very Serious Right Wing Pundits ruminating on whether Hillary was showing too much cleavage and whether or not she left a tip at a Midwestern “loose-meat” diner (whether she did or not, the Very Serious Right Wing Pundits didn’t like it).

Then, when she was secretary of state, those same Very Serious Pundits asked very seriously if she might be faking a blood clot to avoid testimony about the Benghazi murders — testimony she gave when she recovered (and which the Very Serious Pundits then mangled and misrepresented in shameful and dishonest fashion).

Now we’re supposed to get all aghast over the fact that — hang on to your hats, folks — when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used a personal email account! From a server in her own home! OMG (as the youths on the Interwebs say), she may very well have violated the Federal Records Act of 1950! Or regulations from the National Archives! Or something!

Never mind the fact that the change in the FRA to include “electronic communications” was signed in November 2014, after Clinton had already left, on Feb. 1, 2013. Never mind the fact that new regulations from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) regarding personal email use by government officials didn’t go out until September of that year.

Never mind the fact that Colin Powell used a personal email account when he was secretary of state because, like most government email systems, the “official” one was years behind the times and frustrating to use (according to interviews with General Powell).

Never mind that two months ago (before this phony “scandal” even broke), Clinton aides turned over 55,000 pages of work-related emails to the State Department for archiving.

Never mind that, after the State Department reviews them to make sure there’s no classified material, the emails in their possession will be posted online.

No, this is all just more evidence that “proves” the prevailing narrative of how “secretive” and “non-transparent” the Clintons are, and how they feel they’re “above the rules.” Because nothing says “secretive” like turning over 55,000 pages of your email to be posted online, and nothing says “I feel like I’m above the rules” like violating a rule that wasn’t in place when you were in office.

But surely there’s something juicy in the “personal” stuff she didn’t turn over. There’s undoubtedly a smoking gun about Benghazi in the emails between Hillary and the caterer for her daughter’s wedding. (“We decided to go with the white roses for the centerpieces, and BTW, I totally knew about the attack days in advance and did nothing because I hate America and wanted the ambassador to die. BWAHAHAHAHA. Hugs, HRC.”)

Is it irresponsible to speculate? As right-wing pundit Peggy Noonan once said about a particularly ludicrous rumor involving President Bill Clinton, it would be irresponsible not to. That, after all, is the standard used by our so-called liberal media for all things Clinton.

Our national political reportage has become an outright disgrace. Those outlets that aren’t blatant mouthpieces for the far right have become like particularly stupid hound dogs, dutifully chasing whatever manufactured “scandal of the week” gets ginned up by Drudge and Faux News, until actual analysis causes it to fall apart and they’re left chasing their tails in confusion. At least until next time, when the same moronic canines go baying off into the same woods because some right-wing blogger who’s off his meds points and yells, “Rabbit!”

In 1992, I got off the fence, put aside my misgivings about Bill Clinton, and threw my support behind him in large part because of the meanness, general blockheadedness, and pettiness of the forces arrayed against him.

I may have had my doubts, but I’d seen the Republican National Convention, and I knew I wanted nothing to do with those people, because they were bat-spit crazy. In 2015, it seems that history is repeating itself across the national media stage.

So I guess what I’m saying is that, once again, I’ve finally joined Team Clinton. Good job.

O'Reilly, Williams and the Usual Gang of Idiots

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

It’s been a bad couple of weeks for broadcast “journalists.” First there was the kerfuffle over NBC anchorman Brian Williams, who, it seems, might have embellished some of his adventures covering the Iraq war. Williams, speaking at a tribute to a retired soldier, recalled the time when, so he says, the helicopter he was on was forced down by enemy fire.

He was later forced to recant by soldiers who were there at the time who said Williams didn’t show up until a half-hour to an hour after the incident. Williams apologized and is now on a six-month suspension from NBC News.

Among the harshest critics of Williams was Fox News Host Bill O’Reilly, who said that the incident illustrated “a culture of deception in the liberal media” and that his viewers should question “if other news organizations are distorting the facts.”

By “other news organizations,” of course, O’Reilly means “other than Fox News.” If his viewers began caring about news organizations “distorting the facts,” O’Reilly would be out of a job.

The online liberal magazine Mother Jones delved into some of O’Reilly’s own claims of exploits he had while covering the 1982 Falklands War for CBS. O’Reilly, for example, has repeatedly claimed that he was “in a war zone in Argentina, in the Falklands, where my photographer got run down and then hit his head and was bleeding from the ear on the concrete. And the army was chasing us.”

The story ends with O’Reilly dragging his photographer to safety. He disparaged journalist Bill Moyers by sneering, “I missed Moyers in the war zones of [the] Falkland conflict in Argentina, the Middle East, and Northern Ireland. I looked for Bill, but I didn’t see him.” And so on.

O’Reilly also talks about being caught in a “major riot” in Buenos Aires, where “many were killed” and O’Reilly himself had an automatic rifle pointed at him by an Argentine soldier.

Problem is, according to all accounts, no American journalists (and only a tiny handful of British ones) were allowed into the “war zone” in the Falklands, so it’s clear O’Reilly never reported from there. No one else can seem to remember the incident with the photographer.

As for the “major riot” with fatalities, CBS news’s own account (including footage apparently shot by O’Reilly and his team) shows an angry demonstration, but doesn’t show any violence beyond “a man throwing a punch against the car of a Canadian news crew,” according to the Mother Jones article (which actually includes the footage in question).

O’Reilly, confronted with these contradictions, immediately followed Williams’ example, issued a full apology, and went on a six-month hiatus from Fox News.

Ha ha! Just kidding. O’Reilly told Politico that the article was “garbage” and snarled that Corn was a “despicable guttersnipe.”

He even went so far as to threaten New York Times journalist Emily Steele if he didn’t like what she wrote. “I am coming after you with everything I have,” Steele says O’Reilly told her. “You can take it as a threat.”

This was probably a mistake. As I once said to Winston Churchill as we crouched in a bunker during the London Blitz, “Never get into a public fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.” I’ll never forget his reply to me: “Who the bloody [expletive deleted] are you?” Then he threw a Scotch bottle at me. That Winston. What a kidder.

Where both O’Reilly and Williams went wrong is that they began to believe in their own celebrity. The stories they were covering were larger than life, so they felt as if they needed to be larger themselves. It’s a perilous trap, as Master Yoda explained to me right before the attack on the second Death Star: “Forget not my words: the story you are not.”

The difference, however, is summed up in a conversation I had with Arianna Huffington when we were having a drink at the 2012 Democratic Convention. “To be a right-winger,” I told her over apple-tinis, “is to live life without consequences. Accountability is for liberals. If you’re on the right, you can lie, you can make stuff up, and if you get caught at it, all you have to do is claim that you’re the victim of a political vendetta by liberal media and stand your ground. Voila! You’re a right-wing hero.”

I’ll never forget her response: “Security! Over here!”

I think she’s kind of into me. Chicks dig it when I speak French like that. But hey, let’s keep that last part between us. No need to tell the wife. She’s still all stressed out from doing reshoots for the new “Avengers” movie.

THE GOBSHITES SPEAK: I knew this one would get a reaction from the usual gang of idiots, and as always, I'm right. Most of it is in the standard vein of "O'REILLY'S NOT A LIAR, YOU'RE A LIAR BLAGH BLAGH BLAGH! As always, the charge is led by the spasmodically  foaming "Francis", who used to post as "Mark," so I've taken to calling him "Mark/Francis": 

Francis posted at 9:31 am on Sun, Mar 1, 2015.

Posts: 1427

Talk about living life through the experiences of others, dude you have made a living from perfecting that craft, only uniform that yourself has ever worn is probably the BSA, and that may be stretching things a bit, only danger you faced has probably been trying to outrun your own shadow, l 'm not an O'Reilly fan but only thing worse than a liar is a coward that cashes in on writing about that liar.

There's nothing quite so amusing as being called a "coward" by someone who's already admitted in print he's so afraid of me that he doesn't dare post under his own name. Come out from under the rock, "Mark/Francis". I'm pretty sure I know who you are now anyway. 

Then of course, there's the weekly" "why are you writing about this" response by the people who can't wait every week to tell me how much they're bored by the column they read every week: 

FarmBoy posted at 10:04 pm on Sat, Feb 28, 2015.

Posts: 127

Gee Dusty, thanks for such a relevant topic.

Any time, FarmBoy. Let me know if you ever have anything useful to add. 

Pass a Bill, Congress

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

A U.S. president, without action by Congress, takes unilateral executive action to delay deportation and grant work permits to children of undocumented immigrants who would not otherwise be eligible for citizenship.

The president: Ronald Reagan, patron saint of the right wing. The year: 1987. Cries of “tyranny!”, threats of lawsuits, and calls for impeachment: zero.

Another U.S. president expands the program to defer deportation for even more immigrants, again via executive action. The president: George H.W. Bush. The year: 1990. Cries of “tyranny!”, threats of lawsuits, and calls for impeachment: zero.

In 2014, a U.S. president takes executive action after numerous requests for Congress to do something about the broken immigration system. The president: Barack Obama. Cries of “tyranny!”, threats of lawsuits, and calls for impeachment: too many to count.

Actually, I’m sure that the “Republican leadership” (two words I can hardly put in the same sentence without laughing) breathed a huge sigh of relief after the president gave his speech announcing what he planned to do. This is exactly what they wanted. I knew this the minute the Republicans started talking about how any executive action would “poison the well,” meaning that they wouldn’t even try to take action on immigration if Obama did.

The thing is, the GOP really doesn’t want to talk about reforming immigration. John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are terrified of even bringing it up. They know that any realistic immigration reform will have to include some kind of path to legal citizenship for at least some currently illegal immigrants. But they also know that that will send the Teahadist wing of the GOP into a frothing rage.

No matter how many conditions, background checks, payment of back taxes or other conditions that proposed path may require, Boehner and McConnell are very aware that the Raging Right will call anything short of mass imprisonment and automatic deportation “amnesty.” They know that they won’t be able to prevent crackpots like Louie Gohmert or Tom Coburn from saying something racist, xenophobic or condescending that will alienate Latinos even further than their party already has.

Any actual debate on immigration reform, even among the majority, would split the Republican Party and drive America’s fastest growing constituency even further away than they already have.

Immediately after the president’s speech, Boehner told the press: “With this action, the president has chosen to deliberately sabotage any chance of enacting bipartisan reforms that he claims to seek.”

This position is patently absurd. There is absolutely nothing about President Obama’s executive action that keeps Congress from passing its own bill on immigration reform. There is no provision in the Constitution or any federal law that says “should the president do something that hurts the feelings of the majority party, said party shall thenceforth be without power to pass legislation, so there.”

The only thing that’s stopping the Republicans from doing their job of passing legislation is the inability of their “leadership” (chuckle) to actually get their motley collection of nutcases, prima donnas, grifters and future Fox News hosts to fall in line, stop playing to the cameras, and, as the president challenged them in his speech, “pass a bill.”

The Obama administration’s response to every question or complaint needs to be those three words: “Pass a bill.”

“This is dictatorship!” … “Pass a bill.”

“You’re acting lawlessly!” … “Pass a bill.”

“You’re not the boss of us!” … “Pass a bill.”

“You should go to jail for this!” … “Pass. A. Bill.”

In fact, a comprehensive bipartisan immigration bill has already passed the Senate — 68-32, with 14 Republicans crossing the aisle to vote for it. It provides for increased border security, requires mandatory verification systems by employers, and yes, contains an arduous 13-year path to citizenship that could only be called “amnesty” by people completely unaware of what that word actually means. That bill was strangled in its crib by the House.

The House could take up the Senate bill or provide its own version. But that’s not going to happen. The Republicans will stomp their feet and yell and send out fundraising letters and emails. They’ll threaten and maybe even file lawsuits. They’ll threaten to shut down the government and maybe even do it. They’ll threaten to impeach, and maybe even do it. Will they do the one thing that would make this unnecessary, which is pass a bill?

Nope.

We can expect more useless political theater from the party that can win a midterm where only 36.4 percent of the voters show up (a 72-year low), but which is utterly incapable of actually governing afterward.