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On Covid and Texas, Biden Courts a Constitutional Crisis
When Donald Trump was president, we heard a lot about Norms® and Standards.™ Trump was accused of violating this vague collection of unwritten rules, a convenient tactic when they couldn’t prove actual crimes. The good news was that Biden’s election would restore this Beltway-approved system of etiquette. How refreshing.
Eight months into his administration, Biden has folded, spindled, and mutilated our Norms® and Standards,™ even those mandated by the Constitution. Trump was erratic but Biden is openly courting a constitutional crisis.
Pressured by far-left backbencher Cori Bush in August, the White House reinstated an eviction ban already declared illegal by the Supreme Court. Biden knew it was a violation but said: “by the time it gets litigated, it will probably give some additional time.”
As expected, SCOTUS immediately crushed it stating, “if a federally imposed eviction moratorium is to continue, Congress must specifically authorize it.” Just as it says in the Constitution.
On Thursday, Biden made two more obviously unconstitutional moves. First, he ordered hapless Attorney General Merrick Garland to sue the state of Texas over its new abortion law. The administration was furious that the Supreme Court actually followed the law and refused to issue an emergency stay. The DOJ bizarrely claimed that a state exercising its rights will “nullify the Constitution of the United States.”
Later in the day, the President announced a six-point plan to tackle Covid. Called “Path out of the Pandemic,” his executive orders require millions of Americans to get vaccinated or lose their jobs. The groups include federal employees, employees of contractors that do business with the federal government, and workers in hospitals, home health care facilities, and other medical facilities.
Biden also ordered all private employers with 100 employees or more to require weekly Covid testing, and they are required to give employees paid time off to get vaccinated.
“This is not about freedom or personal choice,” Biden said in a national address. “We’ve been patient but our patience is wearing thin and your refusal has cost all of us.” After attacking Americans, the President took on the states. “If these governors won’t help,” Biden said, “I will use my powers as president and get them out of the way.”
Back in December, Biden promised that he would not make vaccines mandatory. Spokeswoman Jen Psaki repeated this in July. But Biden’s promises are irrelevant, as Americans and allies still stranded in Afghanistan have learned. Wanting voters to forget the crisis overseas, he is creating new ones on the homefront.
The White House has no authority to do any of this, of course. The White House knows they have no authority to do any of this. Biden is doing it anyway.
Norms®? Standards™? Not for Biden. He has chosen constitutional crisis.
Published in Politics
Well, don’t look to me for optimism. I thought America was over with Obama’s reelection.
Not until the ammo runs out anyway. Unfortunately for Joe, he just told a lot of guys and gals in charge of “enforcing” his will that they’re gonna be fired if they don’t submit to it. This should be fun.
Maybe “critical” employees will be exempt?
“Never pass a law that you aren’t willing to enforce at gunpoint.”
Of course, this isn’t really a law. . .
This reminds me that one of my cow-orkers used the term “essential workers” at a staff meeting this week, and I almost went ballistic on her. We do not divide Americans into essential and non-essential. Everyone’s work is essential to the one who holds the job.
We should have pushed back on that phrasing 18 months ago.
that was part of my point. the government considers ALL government employees to be “essential.” Just ask them!
I wonder if there are moderate Democrats who supported Joe Biden because they thought Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were too far left, who now feel like they have been ripped off? During the primary season during Democratic debates, Joe Biden was about the only Democrat who would mention that there are constitutional limits on presidential power. Other Democrats on stage shook their heads and Kamala Harris actually laughed at Biden over the notion that presidents are limited in their authority. I guess Biden got the last laugh.
This is a hell of a thing. I imagine that when one gets a contract with the federal government, it must be immensely long and have a thousand provisions in it. Do these contracts come with the provision that the president can impose additional provisions at his whim well after the contract is signed? How is a contract a contract if one side can change the terms at any time?
I’m sure they wouldn’t mind.
Setting aside the Constitutional questions, this is a remarkably illogical and self-contradictory “argument” being made by Dear Leader Biden.
My understanding is that evidence is pretty strong that many of the vaccines that have been applied are effective at protecting the vaccinated, but less so at preventing the passing of the disease to the unvaccinated. If that is true, then the only ones the unvaccinated are hurting are themselves. I have not seen studies as to whether those with natural immunity (whether from illness recovery, or inherent) shed the virus to the unvaccinated. Regardless, the unvaccinated cause no difficulty for the vaccinated. If they get sick, they get sick.
Add on top the risk of vaccines to those who’ve recovered from the illness. It seems reasonable to be concerned about the viral load risk created. In fact, I have heard anecdotally that the reason health care workers comprise such a high percentage of “refusniks” is partially because of this concern.
If Biden’s writers want to claim this is the only way to shut down future “variants”, they are deluded at best and ignoring mounds of scientific evidence to the contrary. Covid is never going away. It will always be with us in some form or other. It is too late. By late 2019 that Chinese junk had sailed. If Biden’s paymasters in the CCP had been responsible global citizens it would have been contained back in Sept/Oct 2019. But…
If the issue is that the unvaccinated will crash our health system, too bad. That’s what you (the Federal government) get for trying to take it over. Nevertheless, if we didn’t crash it last year, it is unlikely we will this year. Sure there are spikes that approach capacity, but they have yet to exceed it, and that’s what capacity is for.
If the issue is that this will drag the economy, nice try, but that doesn’t hold water either. The instilling of all the rules and regs, the distraction of Covid-mongering, and the poor economic policies are a greater drag on the economy. We see that you’re trying to set up the strawman that the crappy economy is not your fault. That it’s the fault of those unpatriotic, unvaccinated deplorables. No one will believe that except your own apologists.
So the question is “why do you care, Biden”? What is the compelling reason for you to attempt to take on such dictatorial powers? By definition this is not an emergency any more. The emergency period ended by May of 2020.
I got double-jabbed with Pfizer early on. I was planning to get a booster this fall (and yes, it’s reasonable that a flu vaccine needs a booster). But if the Biden Maladministration is going to try to force this, I am going to wait on that booster. I do not take well to authoritarianism. And I will respond in a time, place and manner of my choosing. Chosen for maximum practical effect.
I think this is actually another “stray voltage” attempt to take our eye off the debacle in Afghanistan. It’s a three-fer, it will get the Blue troops in line, rallied against the “one true enemy”, it sets up the Dems “arguments” for 2022 and 2024, and they also get to scratch their burning itch to tell others how to live. They are stupid, but not in the ways of Media management and electoral manipulation.
My understanding is that is not true. Or at least there is no evidence for it and no reason to believe it is true.
Kurt Schlicter (sp) was on Twitter and asked a good question. How does this help Biden politically. An awful lot of us who have been vaccinated still oppose universal federal mandates. A lot of the unvaccinated vote Democrat. The only people politically who support this move were always going to vote Dem. Biden won no converts likely lost political support and probably actually made it less likely that large numbers of people will change their minds and get vaccinated
I give this comment triple likes!!!
I wonder about that, too.
I wonder if after he made a mess of Afghanistan and it seemed he might lose the support of his base, he felt he needed to do something more than just give a pay raise to the oppressor class (i.e. his base). Some of those people get their jollies by mandating things, so maybe Biden needed to toss them a bone to keep them from jumping ship. (I could instead make a double-entendre out of all that, but won’t.)
That’s just speculation, and not something I’d lay money on.
I would lay money on that! Except I think it is going to backfire on him. Biden’s really too dumb to know what to do to get out of this mess.
But since it’s unlikely that Biden is thinking up this stuff himself anyway, that means it’s his ‘handlers’ who are that dumb.
Hypothetically, it helps Biden by having the Chinese or Russians refrain from making certain information public….
How dare you take any of those dumb credits away from Biden!
But are they? Is there an end game we’re not seeing? We are 100% sure it’s got nothing to do with our health. Have yet to hear any recommendations about getting/staying healthy. Instead every recommendation / mandate has been 180% from what it should have been
Since no one in any authority has given a rat’s ass about our health, there’s no reason to assume that this “vaccine mandate” has got anything to do with our health.
They want us to get it. They’re determined we get it. They’re threatening us to get it.
Why?
I said months ago that I felt like a rat in a maze. A few months later I felt like a rat in a medical experiment. At this point, I have no idea what they’re up to; but I’m 100% sure it’s got nothing to do with my well being and health.
Edited to remove a “not”
It isn’t political. It’s the move of a weak man who made a promise he can’t keep, likely actually believing he could.
He promised he’d eradicate the virus. His words. And damn it, he will do it. Even if it violates the constitution from here to judgement day.
I think it’s the hubris of a stupid man that was elevated by a corrupt ruling class. It isn’t about politics.
What part of that statement do you believe to be untrue, or lacking in evidence?
Thats the Eugenics law right? The one that was basically used to do a whole bunch of terrible things, included forced sterilizations.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449224/
If America is over, thats the 5th time this year.
Canada is over America, if I read the map right.
It takes that many events in order to crush the American spirit.
The part about vaccines being less effective at preventing the passing of the disease to the unvaccinated. I’m not even sure how to make sense out of that. Maybe it was a short-hand statement for something that needs more explanation.
Every day is the first day of the rest of your life. Every day is the last day of the old America.
I think so too. Trump’s election was a last gasp, maybe an involuntary spasm but four years were spent making sure that spark didn’t reignite.
Got a few 9/11 remembrance messages at work this morning. One from the Secretary of the Air Force and another from the Air Force Materiel Command commander. They ring hollow, “Never forget” and “We will remember”. Uh, your and my boss just botched the withdraw from Afghanistan and has already called a lid for tomorrow. He’s working harder to make me the enemy.
You know, I’ve had the same thoughts. Sept. 11th remembrances that are starting to appear feel like dispatches from a lost America, where a national trauma would bring us together.
In our current crisis, such remembrances feel almost like an avoidance of seeing the tyranny staring us in the face.
Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!
Once Biden declares Marshall Law the crisis can go on forever.