Congress Shows (Rare) Backbone, as Joe Biden Rages

Associated Press reports [3-10-15] that Vice President Joe Biden is in a rage.

Democrats in the White House and Congress accused 47 GOP senators of undermining President Barack Obama in international talks to curb Iran’s nuclear program, saying that trying to upend diplomatic negotiations was tantamount to rushing into war with Tehran.

“The decision to undercut our president and circumvent our constitutional system offends me as a matter of principle,” Vice President Joe Biden said in a statement.

In an open letter Monday to the leaders of Iran, Republican lawmakers warned that any nuclear deal they cut with Obama could expire the day he walks out of the Oval Office. The letter was an aggressive attempt to make it more difficult for Obama and five world powers to strike an initial agreement by the end of March to limit Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran insists is for peaceful purposes.

Leave aside, for a moment, the incredible irony of Biden’s statements, given his boss’ routine evasion of the Constitution when it comes to selective enforcement of Obamacare; the imposition of “net neutrality” on the previously private sector Internet; piecemeal gun control and environmental “legislation” via executive order; and recent talk of using executive power to raise taxes without legislation even going through Congress.

The Constitution is actually functioning as it was intended, at least in this case.

With Iran, we have an obvious enemy whom the President of the United States does not consider an enemy. The President is the commander-in-chief, and it’s true that no military strike can be waged against Iran without that commander-in-chief’s agreement. However, we still have another branch of government, i.e. the Congress. The Congress is simply trying to let our obvious enemy know, “You might be safe for now, but after 1/20/17, it could be a different story.”

Whether there’s any useful point in doing so might be a matter of debate. But there’s no question that the Congress has every moral and Constitutional right to do so. Indeed, if the central purpose of our federal government is to protect us from violent threats at home and abroad, it’s the moral and Constitutional duty of the Congress to make some attempts to compensate for the current President’s negligence.

The point is made that the President was elected twice. That’s true. But the Republican majority in the House has been elected repeatedly, and the Republican majority in the Senate was elected even more recently than Obama was reelected. Doesn’t this give the U.S. Senate at least equal standing in making a statement? No so according to the thin-skinned, perpetually offended and annoyed people who operate the Obama-Biden administration.

In his remarks, Biden takes the same attitude and position that his boss did about Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech before Congress. How dare you question me?

Obama is supposed to be a brilliant and magnificent leader beyond the pale of questioning. But half of the country questions his judgment, if not his intentions, when it comes to his most important Constitutional role of protecting the country from violent enemies. If he were more confident in his positions, he would not have to send out his Vice President to rail against the fact that all Congress is doing is strongly disagreeing with the current President’s policy, in this important instance.

What Biden refers to here as “principle” is the Constitution. Yet that’s absurd. Because on every issue of the day where Congress and Obama disagree, it’s the power of the executive branch that is upheld — so long as Obama (or anyone with his views) is the executive.

You can’t have your Constitution and eat it, too. You cannot say, on the one hand, the Constitution and the separation of powers matter when Congress takes action apart from the President; yet, on the other hand, that separation of powers is irrelevant when the President takes unilateral action, on a daily basis, apart from (and sometimes in total contradiction to) the laws passed by Congress.

The basic issue here is whether you can — and therefore should — broker a “deal” with an open sponsor of terrorism, as Iran has been (according to our own State Department) since 1979. You can’t reason with the unreasonable, and the principled members of Congress who signed this letter are right to say so. All you can do is protect your interests against them, and certainly strike back in retaliation whenever they strike first (including via the covert means of supporting terrorist groups.)

Iran has struck at American freedom and interests, again and again, yet we have never once retaliated against them directly. In our weakness, they have grown stronger. The one promise that this nation’s religious dictatorship will always keep is its threat to destroy American and Israeli interests and citizens every chance it gets. This does not bother Obama, Biden, nor many of their supporters; but it does bother a sizable amount of the U.S. population, and they are entitled to dare and question the President, Biden’s hysteria notwithstanding. At least, until we wake up one day to an executive action to restrict free speech.

Biden said, “In thirty-six years in the United States Senate, I cannot recall another instance in which senators wrote directly to advise another country — much less a longtime foreign adversary — that the president does not have the constitutional authority to reach a meaningful understanding with them.”

Maybe that’s because in thirty-six years there hasn’t been a U.S. President (aside from Jimmy Carter, who mercifully served only one term) who so flagrantly disregards the threats of America’s most dangerous enemies, to the point of treating them more as friends than the violent, abusive attackers they prove themselves to be, time and again.

Iran is an enemy that both political parties have created through decades of appeasement, vacillation and head-in-the-sand evasion. But if some members of our government have finally awakened to this fact, our pretentious President and his testy Vice President have no business complaining about it.