finknottle

Here is a clear discussion and timeline of the legalities: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-...0,1570598.story I can't vouch for the accuracy, but I find it convincing. It goes on to point out that his expulsion was probably illegal, but that he should not be returned to power based on the constitution's requirement that he cease being president, and that the government proceeded exactly as it should have in naming his successor.

Suppose we stubbornly thought that the South had been done wrong by President Lincoln, that he had no legal right to order the military into battle, and that he had no right to remove their elected officials. Would you be calling the action an illegal military coup? Would you say it was the fault of the military and cite posse comitatus, or would you blame the Republican faction of the civilian government? Just to be absolutely clear, I'm not saying that the action of the Honduran Congress and Courts were legal by their laws - I simply don't know, and suspect not. I am taking umbrage at the knee-jerk reaction that this is a military coup, simply by virtue of the fact that the military executed the removal. I see no signs as yet that the military have acted on their own initiative and have taken power, and it looks more to me like was planned and authorized by Congress and the legal establishment.

But what if it is *not* a military takeover, but rather a military removal under instructions by the rest of the elected government? If the president goes bonkers and tries to take over the government by force, could Congress not strip him of his power and ask the military to remove him without it being labeled a military coup? A military takeover suggests that the military runs things. While that may be the case behind the scenes in Honduras, it is anything but obvious. Outside of a 48 hour curfew and arrests of key politicians, things seems unchanged - no suspensions of poltical parties or gatherings, no colonel's in charge. Congress named the Speaker as his replacement, and announced that the elections would proceed as planned. It looks at this point like the rest of the elected government is still in charge.

What exactly do you mean by "Do not allow his referendum to pass?" Holding the referendum was ruled illegal by both his attorney general and the Supreme Court. Are you suggesting that you let him hold it anyway, but compete hard against it? Or not allow him to hold it? If the latter, how? That is the whole point of this crisis - his use of the military and other resources by executive order to carry out activities denied by the other institutions of government. His position is that he can and will, period.

Congress had initiated a formal investigation into his fitness to serve, following the ouster of military chiefs. That suggests to me that there are provisions for removal. But he refused to cooperate, defiantly declaring in his two-hour address “Congress cannot investigate me, much less remove me or stage a technical coup against me, because I am honest. I’m a free president, and nobody scares me.” The Supreme Court has claimed that it ordered his ouster - that is presumably pursuent to a legal action (though whether they can legally initiate them is probably questionable). It all boils down to whether parts of the government have the authority to remove other parts of the government, absent clear proceedures for doing so. If you want to call it a coup, fine - but I'm inclined to consider it civil coup, not a military coup. And if the military were not the ones carrying out the orders of Congress and the Supreme Court, I doubt that the reaction would be the same.

You point re the lack of a clear-cut proceedure is well taken. But my 'social' question is: are coups illegal when the military is acting under a warrant issued by the Supreme Court? Or are we influenced by our knee-jerk reaction against all things military? Would our reaction be the same if the SC had instructed the court baliffs to remove him from office?

Suppose the president of the US wants a referendum on a third term and the Congress say's the proposed timing is illegal; - the matter is escalated and Congress, the Supreme Court, the Electoral Tribunal, and the Commissionar for Human Rights all rule against him; - the President proceeds to enact his plan, and the Supreme Court explicitely and unaminously rules his actions illegal and order the ballots confiscated; - the President orders the army chief of staff to seize the ballots and administer the referendum themselves; - the chief of staff declines on legal advice, he is fired the next day. The Supreme Court unanimously rules the firing illegal and orders him reinstated. - the President issues an executive order instructing the ballots to be transfered and the referendum to be carried out by civil government employees. - the Army acts on a warrent issued by the Supreme Court to arrest the President. Congress strips his authority and names the Speaker as President until the next elections. Is this coup illegal?

If you are living in the past, man. The 1996 welfare reform changed funding from a system where the federal government paid money to states directly based on how many people they had on welfare to one based on more static totals determined by population etc. The earlier system had a perverse reprecussion of paying bonusus to states whose welfare rolls swelled - and reducing welfare meant reducing federal outlays. Under the new system, lower the rolls leaves the state with more money. This change freed states to experiment with things like enacting sunset provisions, work requirements, etc, as you describe. But this years stimulus bill included a provision to end the 1996 act. Rather than simply increase the money dispersed, they changed the program and returned to the older system whereby there is a disincentive to the states to reduce their welfare rolls. If work requirements have not already been eliminated, they soon will be.

I think Joe Biden would question your patriotism.

Here's a simple proposition to drive home a key issue in the Health Care Reform Debate. The politico's want to insure the 50 million without insurance. Instead of muddying things up by tying it to broader reforms, let's simplify and separate the issues and see how the dollars add up. If insurance costs $5,000 a year, we need $250 billion a year to fill the gap. All the wind coming out of Washington is simply a deliberative smokescreen masking the fact that that money has to come out of somebodies pocket. So let's have the 250 million who do have insurance pay for those who don't. If each insured person forks over $1,000 every year, we can provide a $5,000/yr plan for the rest. If your family has insurance then your actual tax contribution would be $1,000 times the number of people in your household, but you get the idea... So let's get this enacted and see what people think before starting on the riskier and irreversable structural changes. Any takers?

We would have been blaming Bush.

Thanks, but in the grand scheme of things I think DCTom's rebuttal re subs is correct. I was not thinking about anything so nuanced as conversion. My real argument was simply about the value of dual-use bombers.

That's not the half of it. Here's the occupational distribution of the presidents economic advisors: 3 Industry (GE, Catapiller, and Oracle) 4 Academics (2 economists, a business school dean, and a CIO) 1 SEC 5 Financial Services (3 investment services, one realty investment, and a VC now specializing in clean technology and electric cars) 2 Unions 1 Spanish media empire I find the relative lack of industry voices anything but inspiring. There is plenty of Ivy, Union Halls, and Wall Street, but where is Main Street? Which of these clowns are going to have anything practical to contribute about restoring our manufacturing base? Or invigorating small businesses? I see the unions - where are the business associations?

I'm not sure, but isn't the difference whether or not you have a formal paid position in the administration?

I find pointless this whole argument about whether Obama is considering it, an advisor to Obama, or an outside advisor. I am flat against stimulus spending. HOWEVER, any president - particularly Obama, whose fortunes are linked to establishing that the first stimulus was neccessary - would be derelict in his responsibilities to not be discussing it as an option. So the only interesting question here is: did Magox intentionally misquote the passage to tie the discussion closer to Obama?

Good rebuttal! Too bad the other posters wasted their time thinking about why they disagreed when they could have just adopted your amusing and sophisticated brand of repartee.

Correct - it's a strawman characterization, but kinda neccessary lest we wind up picking and choosing what part of the spending we want to defend. The bill includes, after all, money to mow lawns around federal buildings, fix toilets in national parks, and teach family planning. It also includes food stamps and unemployment benefits. If we want to address the question of whether a stimulus bill creates permenant jobs, we have to get a handle on this moving target and pick a representative expenditure. The idea of jobs from infrastructure spending and capital improvements is the idea on which the bill was sold to the public - after all, that's why we keep using the phrase 'shovel-ready projects.'

How do you bring up a carrier group to, say Afganistan? And I understood that they were among the first on the scene in Kosovo and in Afganistan. As for air superiority, sure - depending on what you mean exactly. The typical threat we face in the modern era is not from other planes (the customary meaning), but from sophisticated anti-aircraft defences. We didn't fear the Yugoslav or Iraqi Air Forces; we worried about their Russian-supplied air defences. Stealth bombers have the ability to fly and bomb from significantly higher altitudes, and better evade detection. They are what you use (along with long-range missiles) to knock out the radar and anti-aircraft installations so that tactical fighters can operate safely.

Exactly. Grit our teeth and get through it. What the stimulus bill does is artifically create temporary business opportunities which will go away when the stimulus bill does (that is, unless the intention was the permanent expansion of the State after all). What happens in the ideal scenario? They start a bunch of highway projects, and we go get jobs flattening tar. What happens in 5 years when the projects are done and there is no more stimulus money? We have hundreds of new construction companies brimming with employees, far exceeding demand. So you layoff the employees and fold the companies and are right back where you started. Oh yes, and you now also owe the lenders for that stimulus spending. The only permant jobs will be those which align with market demand. An employment market distorted through one-time federal spending is not sustainable. So let unaltered market forces decide where people should invest their money and create jobs. If one really insists on kickstarting the job-creating process, the proper solution is to increase the supply of investible money through tax cuts - something which won't go over well with the left.

That's just the point. Nuclear weapons are one thing. But nuclear-capable delivery systems are another - they are frequently dual use, and we do use them.

For the typical modern crisis, a B-2 is often much more effective an option for a timely response. 1. It takes weeks to position a carrier, and maintaining a presence in theater over extended times becomes a logistical problem. A B-2 can take off and get anywhere it needs to go within a day. Because of their quick response, and the fact that there is no coast to park off of anyway, they filled a critical need in Afghanistan after 9/11. 2. A B-2 can penetrate defended airspace more safely - that's why they were the choice for the Balkan missions, where we faced Russian-supplied air defenses. 3. A B-2 bomber can deliver 500lb bombs and heavy GPS-guided bombs. These are essential for surgical strikes against hardened targets.

I thought the meetings in Russia were irrelevant, an indication that his priorities are about 30 years out of date. An interesting NYP article points out that there is an impact in the here-and-now: http://www.nypost.com/seven/07072009/posto...deal_177977.htm By agreeing to cuts on our nuclear-capable delivery systems (bombers in particular), he has forced a reduction in our ability to project conventional power. One less B-2 bomber is one less bomber available for Iraq or wherever tomorrows crisis is. One less nuclear-armed submarine is one less submarine in the gulf available to fire Tomahawk missiles. In short, what the Russians did under the guise of nuclear arms reduction is whittle down our global conventional power towards theirs. Score one for the One!

You would read Gallup poles like http://www.gallup.com/poll/121403/Special-...aspx?CSTS=alert and realize that the country is not shifting leftward, media bias notwithstanding. Conservativism as an ideology is fine. It is the Republican party, as a vehicle for conservativism, that is broken. Moving towards the ideology of the Democrats - because they are winning instead of when it actually makes sense - will do no good if the issue is the messenger and not the message. So - this may be the one time where shooting the messenger makes the most sense.

I'm not sure Iran has any capacity to project power other than through terrorist proxies. Which they would do, of course - but 'trading blows' is a bit misleading as a descriptive. Iran would let loose with a thousand pinpricks, and probably shut down the straits of Hormuz for a time. Israel may or may not (not, I think) respond with further strikes on Iran proper.

No. Not even close. You have to go all the way back to the 1907-1909 Congress and the days of Teddy Roosevelt. In more recent decades, they were clearly in the minority up until 1995, with the Democrats averaging 56-44 advantage in the Senate and 260-175 in the House. The Republicans took control of both from 1995-2007, but it was a much thinner majority than the Democrats enjoyed: 1995 52-48 230-204 1997 55-45 226-207 1999 55-45 223-211 2001 49-51 221-212 2003 51-48 221-212 2005 55-44 231-202 Thus the Republicans never had close to a fillibuster-proof majority, and all legislation had to include some democratic crossover to get voted on. Starting in 2007 the Democrats took control - needless to say, we have not seen in our lifetimes what absolute control of the legislation process means. 2007 49-51 199-236 2009 40-60 178-257 So no, it isn't quite business-as-usual in a two party state.