From the Thursday edition of the Morning Jolt:
Obama Administration: We Don’t Need Congress to Approve an Iran Treaty
Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the White House doesn’t view an agreement with Iran as a treaty that requires Senate approval, but a matter of “executive prerogative.”
Article II, Section 2, clause 2, U.S. Constitution:
[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur . . .
It’s just down the street in the National Archives, Mr. President, check it yourself.
Not only do we have a president who just ignores the Constitution, we have an administration full of people who go along with it.
We might be seeing the first really serious rebellion of congressional Democrats from an Obama policy:
A heated exchanged between President Barack Obama and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey) broke out Thursday over whether the U.S. should impose new sanctions on Iran amid ongoing negotiations over the country’s nuclear program, according to two senators who were in the room.
Menendez, the leading Democrat pushing for additional sanctions against Iran, forcefully pressed Obama on the need for additional sanctions during a meeting in which Obama urged Menendez and other senators to drop their efforts to pass sanctions legislation. Additional sanctions, Obama argued, could torpedo ongoing negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program…
Obama said that as a former senator himself, he understood how outside forces — like special interests and donors — can influence senators to act, one of the senators recounted.
That’s when Menendez stood up to challenge the President, telling Obama he took “personal offense” to his assertions, the New York Times reported, arguing that he has worked to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions for many years and was not motivated by political considerations.
You noticed the spinning wheel of positions on sanctions in Obama’s State of the Union, right? Sanctions were proving spectacularly effective with Russia, enacting new sanctions on Iran was tantamount to war, and the trade embargo with Cuba — effectively just another sanction — was a terrible failure. All at the same time!
I can’t add much to what Jay said . . .
Some of us wondered, “Why does Obama think that opposition to his Iran policy is based on ‘donors’? Is opposition to his Cuba policy based on donors? His Russia policy? His anything policy? Why this one area of Iran?”
Hmmm . . . Does it have anything to do with “rhymes with ‘choose,’” as Rick Brookhiser would say?
Barack Obama is not, as his gushing fans believe, a nice man; further proof of that is the fact that he thinks that the only conceivable reason a Democrat could lack faith that his policies will contain the Iranian nuclear program is pressure from donors.