Suing the President

Liberals are in typical scoffing and mocking mode about the House pursuing a lawsuit against President Obama for failure to execute the laws faithfully, another example of the situational ethics of liberalism as well as their contempt for the separation of powers and the Constitution itself.  Liberals never thought it odd when members of Congress attempted to sue both Presidents Bush (unsuccessfully) for violating the War Powers Act, or President Clinton (successfully) over the line item veto, or President Reagan (successfully) over the first iteration of the Gramm-Rudman Act.

To be sure, most attempts of individual members of Congress to sue the president are unsuccessful for lack of standing, which is what makes the current legal strategy—usually the kind of creative reading of the law that liberals love everywhere else—so plausible.  Mark Tapscott of the Washington Examiner observed the other day that the theory is attracting support from across the spectrum of ideological opinion among the law professoriate.  But the real laurels should go to Elizabeth Price Foley, who explained in a hearing of the House Rules Committee last week just why this lawsuit can go forward and is likely to succeed on the merits (just 7 minutes long):

Exit question for liberals: If you don’t like the House lawsuit, would you prefer impeachment instead?

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses