The new "politics as usual"

As the Republican lawsuit against President Obama proceeds, I'm reminded of the last time the GOP couldn't prevent a two-term Democratic presidency and resorted to political maneuvering to attempt to thwart the will of the people.  Of course, I'm speaking of the totally baseless impeachment attempt against President Clinton.  His sexual peccadilloes somehow reached the height of "high crimes and misdemeanors" in the eyes of the partisan crowd that couldn't defeat him at the polls.  Republicans today know they would never win an impeachment vote in the Senate so they are taking the President to court for using his executive powers in ways that go against their right-wing ideology.  They know that an impeachment effort would risk increasing Obama's approval ratings just as happened with Clinton after their ham-handed impeachment proceedings back in the '90's..

With their voter repression laws in place and their coffers filled with "Citizens United" money, Republicans have very powerful new tools for retaining the House and quite possibly winning the Senate this year.  Even without taking over that legislative body, they can continue their obstructionist tactics to slow the appointment of federal judges.  Republican control of the Senate would, however, guarantee an end to any possibility that even moderate justices will be appointed to the 59 vacancies in the federal courts.  In recent years, these courts have become the venue for the reversals of progressive legislation - including local gun laws.  In a recent example, on July 26, a federal judge struck down D.C.'s ban on open or concealed "carry" as unconstitutional.

Jack Lienke, in a post on Mother Jones, points out what could be a new trend in right-wing lawsuits:  "If you can't beat 'em, point out their typos." As Lienke writes: "The D.C. Circuit Court's recent decision in Halbig v. Sebelius...could render millions of Americans ineligible for health insurance subsidies on the basis of some sloppy syntax in the Affordable Care Act.  After surviving more than 50 repeal votes in the House, a Supreme Court challenge to its constitutionality, and a famously rocky online rollout, health-care reform may end up hobbled by a mere drafting error."  The debate comes from whether Congress intended subsidies only for state run health care exchanges or for the federal health care exchange as well.  The D.C. court says that only state-run health care exchanges can provide subsidies.  The Fourth Circuit Court in Virginia came to the opposite conclusion and no one is about to lose his or her health care subsidy yet.  But unless the full D.C. Circuit Court reverses its three-judge-panel ruling, the ACA will be once again before the Supreme Court.   Frankly, I'm not willing to bet too much on John Roberts voting twice in a row to uphold the Affordable Care Act. The original ruling upholding the ACA already seriously weakened it by making the medicaid expansion portion of the law voluntary and leaving it up to the states. So a vote by SCUSA to further limit the ACA is not too far-fetched.

Now the President's "signature environmental achievement," the EPA rules on emissions from coal-burning power plants, is under attack:  "A new suit asks the D.C. Circuit to nix the president's biggest climate-change initiative—EPA's 'Clean Power Plan'—due to a 25-year-old mistake in the text of the Clean Air Act."  Basically, a Senate amendment to the Clean Air Act gives the EPA the right to control carbon dioxide emissions; a House amendment does not.  Lienke places his hopes for a positive decision on the 1984 Chevron doctrine: "if a statute does not 'speak clearly' with respect to a particular issue, courts will defer to any reasonable interpretation offered by the executive agency charged with implementing the law."  I hope he's right.

Partisanship has been at an all-time high since Obama's election - amusing in light of his policies which can best be described as those of an "Eisenhower Republican".  The Affordable Care Act was based on a conservative think tank's model for health care and previously implemented by a Republican governor.  It became law without gaining a single Republican vote.   The Republicans' unprecedented use of the filibuster has stymied legislation and, just as importantly, judicial and executive branch appointments.  The use of the filibuster to prevent these appointments is an attack on the legitimacy of the Presidency.  How can he do the job that he was elected to do if filibustering prevents him from making the appointments he wants?  In fact, it was Republicans' declared intention to filibuster all of Obama's nominees to the DC circuit court ---yes, that DC circuit court, whose three judge panel ruled against the Affordable Care Act  in Halbig vs. Sibelius--- simply because they didn't want a Democratic president to be able to fill any more vacancies that finally led the Democratic leadership to adopt the modest filibuster reform of November 2013.

So there you have it - the domestic politics of 21st century America: hyper-partisanship, unlimited money to influence elections, voter repression laws, attacks on the legitimacy of the presidency, corporations granted personhood, and unending lawsuits relying on conservative activist judges in the federal courts to overturn enacted legislation.  The Greeks invented democracy in the 6th century B.C.  Those ancients must be turning over in their graves looking at the form "rule by the people" takes 2,600 years later in the country that fancies itself the world's foremost democracy.

Related
"The District of Columbia asked a federal judge Monday [August 25] to reconsider his July ruling that overturned D.C.’s ban on possessing handguns in public. U.S. District Judge Frederick Scullin Jr. “failed to conduct the analysis required by controlling law, and relied on flawed, non-controlling decisions from other jurisdictions” when he declared D.C.’s public handgun ban unconstitutional, according to the city’s lawyers."[Washington Free Beacon, Aug 26]