Simple. We are in a war against Al-Qaeda. Does the war end the minute an Al-Qaeda member makes it into American territory?
Simple - both chambers passed the bill by veto proof margins. No President ever wants a veto overridden, so they apparently decided there's no point in a veto if it's not going to hold anyway.
Frankly, that's silly. EDIT: Not just silly, this is most piss-poor rationalization in Major's large history of rationalizations.
I think publicly deriding the decisions of Congress on an issue this fundamental is more important than how he'll look after having a veto overridden. Some fights are worth having, even if the outcome against you is set.
E.g., Truman and the 1950 Internal Security Act. More to the point, Obama was never against this bill due to a perceived assault on civil liberties. Anyone making such a claim is completely full of **** - seeing as every one of the soon-to-be codified atrocities in this bill have already been routinely used and abused by Obama since his election. Greenwald writes well... More at the link. All of which, I might add, further reinforces just how outrageously stupid Major's comment is about Obama's "hesitation to have a veto overridden". What a load of wannabe-revisionist horse****. Seriously "no president wants to have a veto overridden"? There's not a rolleyes big enough...
I'd agree - but that's not really how any President operates. It's very rare for Presidents to suffer a veto override. Even vetoes themselves are pretty rare - the main reason Presidents issue veto threats is that it forces Congress to re-evaluate a bill before it ever gets to the President's desk - that's especially true when your own party controls a chamber. Obama has issued a bunch of veto threats, and generally it causes the Senate to not pass whatever bill he's threatening. The real administration failure here was that his threat didn't cause Democrats to put a halt to the bill. Remember - this is not an ideological administration. Good or bad, it doesn't really ever fight battles just for the sake of it. Everything is done with a particular outcome in mind; if they don't get the intended outcome, they re-evaluate and move on.
It amazes me that two people who are so fundamentally different as Rhad and myself so often agree on civil liberty issues. I am very disappointed. Executive power and civil liberties was an area I was actually excited about for an Obama presidency.
No, the real administration failure here is that it didn't actually have a problem with the issue the bill was addressing. It's only problem was that it didn't want the powers that Bush created and then candidate Obama railed against limited or taken away.
We ain't all that different, I'd argue. It's amusing how Major is continuing to argue his story oblivious to the fact that the veto was never intended as an objection to the premise of the bill.
I don't think this was ever in question. My first post on this on Page 1 is the text of the White House's concerns - and they were entirely about tying the White House's hands. But even the revised bill still had gotten a veto threat from the WH; it was only withdrawn literally as the House was in the process of passing it with a 2/3rd majority (it passed with 67.2%). It's pretty clear what caused the WH to back down.
It's amusing that you continue to argue your story despite the fact that the new bill STILL faced the veto threat and the veto threat was withdrawn literally at the exact moment that the bill got a veto proof vote in the House.
I'm not sure which is more loathsome: Your understated rationalization that Obama's "hands are tied" or your complete and total lack of concern regarding the bills' effects and Obama's support thereof.
To be clear Major, your posts ignored the far more fundamental issue of why Obama threatened the veto... in favor of a transparent argument that desperately tries to pin the ultimate blame on congress. Your first post certainly clarifies the struggle between Obama and congress, yet glosses right over the practical results of the matter regardless of which "side" won.
For once, let me look upon you with my (voice drop) own eyes. This thread's awesome factor just skyrocketed.
So what if it got vetoed? actions > words That's a ridiculous stance on this issue if you're the supposed ideologue he pretended to be during his campaign.
I didn't blame or defend anyone. I didn't pin the failure on Congress - I said the Obama admin's objective was to get Dems in Congress to change their mind and he failed to do that. I even called it an "administration failure". And I haven't commented ANYWHERE on the merits of the bill. Someone asked how this happened, and I explained why the WH pulled their veto threat - it was purely a political decision to avoid a veto override. The WH had two primary stated concerns with the bill - the required detention and the required military custody. The conference committee for the bill addressed the former, but not the latter, which is why the veto threat continued until the exact moment that the admin had failed on their veto threat. Would they have continued the veto threat if there was less than a 2/3rd majority? I can't say. But we know they continued their veto threat even after the language was changed. Its amusing that you look at any explanation that doesn't fit what you want to believe to be a defense of the administration. I stated that the administration failed to achieve their objective and then pulled a purely political move to save face, and you somehow consider that a defense of the admin?
