Allahpundit
Hot Air
11/22/2013
Via Mediaite, which clipped this because of Jon Karl’s cheeky allusion to O dumping Hindenburg pilot Kathleen Sebelius near the end. That’s cute, but I’m more interested in what Josh Earnest (pinch-hitting for Jay Carney) says before that. Karl wants to know whether the White House opposes going full thermonuclear by ending the filibuster for Senate bills too. Remember, yesterday’s rule change supposedly applies only to confirmation votes for executive appointees, like cabinet members and lower-court judges (but not SCOTUS nominees). That gives Obama a free hand to pack federal appellate courts with hard-left liberals, but it leaves the filibuster intact for most other Senate business. How durable is that, though? Are Obama and Reid really committed to the line they’ve drawn or are we headed for a full nuking of what’s left of the filibuster, with 51 votes the new threshold for all Senate bills? Earnest’s reply: Talk to Reid. In other words, no, they’re not committed. All bets are off….
Read the rest of the article at HotAir.
–
–
From TodayNews on YouTube:
…Karl began by asking a broader question about filibuster reform. “Both you and the President mentioned gun control legislation among the list of things that had majority support but couldn’t pass because they were being blocked in the Senate,” he said. “Is it the President’s view that this so-called nuclear option of doing away with the filibuster should also apply to legislation as well as to nominees?…
Related: The Nuclear Option: Obama Mocks the Constitution
…This is a man who was granted the extraordinary luxury of attending one of the most prestigious universities in the world. He went to law school. He told us he was an expert on constitutional law. He taught students about the U.S. Constitution.
He is now our president and fills a rather large role in executing that Constitution.
And it is as if he has never read the actual Constitution. Or, as if he read it and found it all so confusing that he simply could not comprehend one of the most basic tenets of it — that the legislature writes laws, which then go to the president for either his signature or veto.
Presidents do not get to write laws. They do not get to ignore laws they do not like or make up new ones on a whim…
