OBama is hinting that he may just bypass the Congress on the debt issue and invoke his own interpretation of the Constitution as stipulating that the POUTUS can use his executive power to enjoin the Treasury and the Fed to issue more bonds. Worst case is that Repubs will claim its not legal and the Dems will gain a little respect for his initiative. Since there can be no joint resolution the whole Congressional inquiry/impeachment question is moot.
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I don't really think it is President Obama giving "his interpretation" Ditto, but since he IS a constitutional law professor it could be a VERY accurate interpretation.
Funny how the TEABAGGERS forget about the provisions of the constitution they don't want to acknowledge (Just wait for the replys from the resident right wing radicals, and by the way given the sparce participation on this forum are there any left except the few permanant crazy's??????)
Here is the part of the 14th amendment the radical right doesn't want to admit is in the constitution:
Validity of public debt
Section 4 confirmed the legitimacy of all United States public debt appropriated by the Congress. It also confirmed that neither the United States nor any state would pay for the loss of slaves or debts that had been incurred by the Confederacy. For example, several English and French banks had lent money to the South during the war.[47] In Perry v. United States (1935), the Supreme Court ruled that under Section 4 voiding a United States government bond "went beyond the congressional power".
"Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void."
This portion of the amendment was solely to ensure the US paid its war debts. And, to ensure the US government was not responsible for Confederate debts. Nowhere is power transferred fron the legislative to the executive branch. Secretary Geithner should be reminded that any debt found to be illegally spent, with his knowledge, is his personal responsibility. Tiny Tim would be working for a long time.
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Note Section 5:
"The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."
It is Congress who has authority over the national debt.
14th Amendment is no debt solution, writes Laurence Tribe
One of President Barack Obama’s most enthusiastic supporters, Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, said on Friday the White House and Congress can’t fall back on the 14th Amendment to make an end run around the current debt crisis.
Writing on the New York Times op-ed page, Tribe, who once called Obama the “best student I ever had,” said the idea that a president can use the 14th Amendment to borrow money without regard to Congress provides “the false hope of a legal answer that obviates the need for a real solution.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/s...7.html#ixzz1RWbkyMwz
Tribe is as liberal a lawyer as they come. However, in the last few years he's made a number of statements driving the left crazy. Especially his re-examination of the 2nd Amendment.. He now believes it does list gun ownership as a civil right.
Tribe is as liberal a lawyer as they come. However, in the last few years he's made a number of statements driving the left crazy. Especially his re-examination of the 2nd Amendment.. He now believes it does list gun ownership as a civil right.
Maybe he stopped "drinking the Kool-aid". 
Tribe is as liberal a lawyer as they come. However, in the last few years he's made a number of statements driving the left crazy. Especially his re-examination of the 2nd Amendment.. He now believes it does list gun ownership as a civil right.
08/27/99
Scholar's shift in thinking angers liberals
By Tony Mauro, USA TODAY
Publication of the first volume of a revised edition
of a legal treatise would not ordinarily make news.
But even before it began arriving at law schools last
week, Laurence Tribe's American Constitutional Law was
causing a stir.
Tribe, a Harvard law professor who is probably the
most influential living American constitutional scholar,
says he has already gotten hate mail about his new
interpretation of the right to bear arms contained in
the Second Amendment.
Relegated to a footnote in the first edition of the
book in 1978, the right to bear arms earns Tribe's
respect in the latest version.
Tribe posits that it includes an individual right,
"admittedly of uncertain scope," to "possess and use
firearms in the defense of themselves and their homes."
None of Tribe's new thinking changes his view that
gun-control measures are "plainly constitutional," but
his shift has been enough to anger gun-control advocates.
So, people have a right to own a gun, and the government has the power to control that right. Whats new?
Tribe is as liberal a lawyer as they come. However, in the last few years he's made a number of statements driving the left crazy. Especially his re-examination of the 2nd Amendment.. He now believes it does list gun ownership as a civil right.
08/27/99
Scholar's shift in thinking angers liberals
By Tony Mauro, USA TODAY
Publication of the first volume of a revised edition
of a legal treatise would not ordinarily make news.
But even before it began arriving at law schools last
week, Laurence Tribe's American Constitutional Law was
causing a stir.
Tribe, a Harvard law professor who is probably the
most influential living American constitutional scholar,
says he has already gotten hate mail about his new
interpretation of the right to bear arms contained in
the Second Amendment.
Relegated to a footnote in the first edition of the
book in 1978, the right to bear arms earns Tribe's
respect in the latest version.
Tribe posits that it includes an individual right,
"admittedly of uncertain scope," to "possess and use
firearms in the defense of themselves and their homes."
None of Tribe's new thinking changes his view that
gun-control measures are "plainly constitutional," but
his shift has been enough to anger gun-control advocates.
So, people have a right to own a gun, and the government has the power to control that right. Whats new?
Before, he believed that the 2nd amendment applied solely to the ability of the states to have an armed militia -- national guard.
Its rather like a previous atheist admitting he now believes in a suprem being. He hasn't defined the Being, but is on the road to Damascus, nevertheless.
Some people would rally behind Obama no matter what he does. I understand admiring him and standing behind him, but some people would follow him off the side of a cliff. Why not evaluate it for what it really is instead of blindly accepting what our President does?
Does no one remember Thomas a Becket's reply to a young zealous lawyer who stated he would over turn every protection of English law to pursue the Devil.
"Then, sir, when the Devil turns on your with all his evil might, where will you hide!"
Not an exact quote, but close.
