Was the "nuclear option" not a constitutional crisis?

[paineinthearse]

The corporate media was so quick to label the impeachment of Bill Clinton as a Constitutional crisis.

To me, the rethug plan to short circuit the Senate rules was much more of a Constitutional crisis, as their plan was to abuse the power of the President of the Senate rather than to go through the rule change process under the standing rules mandated by the Constitution.

Did anyone ever hear the words "Constitutional crisis" mentioned at any point over the past 3 months?

[Fiona]

1. Neither

Clinton's impeachment or the threat of the nuclear option was a "constitutional crisis". I don't recall the media saying Clinton's impeachment was.

The impeachment was perfectly constitutional, and the threat of the nuclear option is outside the purview of the constitution.

[Gothmog]

2. Yes, This was a constitutional crisis

The nuclear option was a clear violation of senate rules and would give the executive too much control over the judiciary. The culture of the senate would have been destroyed, in that the Senate would have become just like the house.

[tritsofme]

3. No so much a constitutional crisis as a Senate crisis

The Constitution tells each House of Congress to determine their own rules, but leaves no recourse when the majority chooses to ignore rules and procedures that they set.

[TahitiNut]

4. It would rightfully called a "Constitutional crisis" since ...

It clearly involves the corruption of presumptions inherent in the Constitution. When the Constitution grants each house of Congress the authority to determine their own rules, the absolutely clear presumption is that they would comply with those rules. The 'nuclear option' is an outright and deliberate violation of those rules. In circumventing an implied codicil of the Constitution, the Republicans seek to hijack an obscenely imbalanced separate and equal branch of government: the Judiciary. In doing so, the checks and balances of the Constitution are demolished.

Make no mistake - the Legislature already has extraordinary power over the Judiciary in the design of laws that the Judiciary, absent Constitutional conflicts, is ethically bound to use as their guidance, and the Legislature has almost complete control over the composition and funding of the Judiciary.

The impeachment of a President, even for specious reasons, still complies with the Constitution and all applicable rules and procedures. (I, for one, wish that Presidents were impeached more often - along with Judges, Justices, Cabinet Secretaries, and Congressmen.)

[paineinthearse]

5. Precisely, so let's circle back to my original question:

Did anyone read/hear the corporate media calling this a "Constitutional crisis"?

[tritsofme]

6. Speaking in the abstract

I don't think the "nuclear option" is illegal, the Senate sets new precedents all the time, and technically this wouldn't be different.

If we had reasonable people in Congress, and reasonable resident in the White House I would support some of the things the GOP is talking about now in regards to to judicial nominees.

For instance I think that a nominee should be guaranteed a hearing in the Judiciary Committee, and a vote on that nominee in committee. None of the shenanigans we saw under Clinton.

If sent to the full Senate, I think the nominee should have an up or down vote in the full Senate. The Constitution implies very strongly that only majority support is necessary for confirmation by not signalling out executive nominees as requiring a supermajority support for confirmation. The filibuster prevents advice and consent from being given by the Senate.

Like I said, I'm not unhappy to see the Democrats in the Senate keeping at least some of these nutjobs off of the bench for lifetime appointments, but looking at the situation from the abstract I personally think they have a stronger argument than we do.

[TahitiNut]

7. Hogwash.

"I don't think the "nuclear option" is illegal, the Senate sets new precedents all the time, and technically this wouldn't be different."

This is sheer nonsense. The so-called "nuclear option" is based on the overtly dishonest pretense that the presiding officer can, by the admittedly dishonest claim of "unconstitutionality," overturn a plain-language Rule of the Senate that has stood in blackletter rules for 85 years and has been established in practice ("usage") for 200 years. Such a claim has never been made in the many times when the Rules were being proposed and established by the due processes of the Senate - and that would be the time to challenge them, It's a total charade, unsubstantiated and unacknowledged by any non-partisan authority.

Let me try to make this even clearer. This tactic is based not as much on a question of 'right vs. 'wrong' or 'legal vs. 'illegal' as it is on a question of sovereign authority. It's a question of "Who has the legitimate authority to judge the legitimacy of the acts of a majority in the Senate?" ("Who will watch the watchmen?")

It's the epitome of the distinction between "The Rule of Law" vs. "The Rule of Men." It's the very same issue that makes the judicial nominees themselves reprehensible!

It's very much like lynchings in the Old South and the question of State's Rights. When the white power structure turned a blind eye to the overtly illegal and inhuman lynchings, that same power structure proclaimed that Federal law enforcement had no legitimate authority to interfere with State law enforcement - and questions of murder have always been under a State's sovereign authority. (That's much of why some States have capital punishment and some do not.) It wasn't until the Federal government established the Civil Rights Law (and "life" is a civil right) that the Attorney General and the FBI gained the legitimate authority to deal with the malicious failure to prosecute lynchings. It was never a question of legitimacy, per se; it was a question of sovereignty.

Just what does anyone think would've happened if the Supreme Court, in the 50's and 60's, was populated with George Wallace and Orville Faubus ideological clones? It's clear to me that we'd still be seeing lynchings and "whites only" restrooms.

This is, in my view, the evil of partisanship. When a person is a racial partisan (having a greater 'loyalty' to their race than to the law) they're called a bigot. I personally regard political partisanship (having a greater 'loyalty' to political party than to the law) as an equivalent evil. It's this evil that permitted the totalitarian abuses of Communism (in the Soviet Union and China) and National Socialism (in Germany, Spain, and Italy).