essaysfromtheedge

It's The Constitution, Stupid

Well, the Speakerette of the U.S. House of Representatives - or Queen Nancy, as she likes to be called - really stepped in it this time. Prior to her current trip to the Middle East she had only fallen on her face (demanding a large jet for her shuttles home), stuck her finger in an outlet (exempting her district from the minimum wage hike to please a large district donor, Starkist Tuna), and fell flat on her fat tushy (imposing a date for withdrawal of troops from Iraq in a bill laden with pork spending). These can easily be brushed off as gaffes of freshman incompetence.

But, when you've stepped in it, the stink rises in great wafts and surrounds you for eons of time and space.

Her stink was so overpowering, even liberal rags like the Washington Post noticed. In an editorial dated April 5, 2007, they bemoaned her foolish shuttle diplomacy (Pratfall in Damascus).

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) offered an excellent demonstration yesterday of why members of Congress should not attempt to supplant the secretary of state when traveling abroad. After a meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, Ms. Pelosi announced that she had delivered a message from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that "Israel was ready to engage in peace talks" with Syria.

[snip]

Only one problem: The Israeli prime minister entrusted Ms. Pelosi with no such message.

Now, tell me. How stupid do you have to be to believe that Mr. Assad, "a corrupt thug," was engaging in nothing more than "mere propaganda" in stating that he was "'ready to resume the peace process'?" (All quotes are the Post's, a notoriously liberal paper.)



Well, evidently you have to be as stupid as Queen Nancy!

She clearly misunderstood what Olmert said to her (PMO denies peace message to Assad). In his statement, the Israeli Prime Minister firmly denounced Pelosi's gaffe:

Olmert, the statement clarified, told Pelosi that Syria's sincerity about a genuine peace with Israel would be judged by its willingness to "cease its support of terror, cease its sponsoring of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations, refrain from providing weapons to Hizbullah and bringing about the destabilizing of Lebanon, cease its support of terror in Iraq, and relinquish the strategic ties it is building with the extremist regime in Iran."

Oops! Awash in the nebulous pother of her Liberal Guilt, Pelosi failed to correctly interpret the PM's clear statement. Too many voices of false confession drowning out her conscious thought processes.

This is all bad enough, but there's a bigger problem here that's not being mentioned. True, the fact that the third-in-line to the Presidency is a blithering idiot. That should cause even public school graduates in America no small concern.

What's missing in the mainstream analyses is Pelosi's obvious attempt to subvert the United States Constitution. Article II Section 2 clearly gives the Executive Branch the power to engage in Affairs of State, which include relations with foreign governments, and establishing and enforcing foreign policy. This power has resides in the Department of State (a Cabinet position), under the President.

He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls,...

No where in Article I of the Constitution (The Legislative Branch) does it state that Congress has the authority to mitigate Foreign Policy.

Just as Pelosi stepped on the Constitution in her attempt to take away the President's Consitutional powers as Commander-in-chief of the armed forces (Article II, Section 2: "The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States;") by forcing a timeline on military action in Iraq (Pelosi's rocky road to the Middle East), she is now actively suborning the role of the State Department.



Two things need to happen here:

1. Queen Nancy needs a serious lesson in Constitutional Law; and this lesson must come publicly, must come harshly, and must come from members of both political parties, both houses of Congress, AND the mainstream media. There must be absolutely NO waffling on this issue - she needs to be corrected in the bluntest manner possible, and if she is to have ANY credibility she needs to publicly acknowledge her mistakes and start to pull the tatters of her Speakership back together.

2. She needs to explain why, in the above picture, her left eye is brown and her right eye is blue. If the woman can't be trusted to get her contacts in correctly, how can we trust her with the government of our country?




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posted by Tomás @ 4/05/2007 08:32:00 PM