Responding to this post, Conor quotes me:
Has this president broken the law, lied under oath, or authorized war crimes?
Yes, President Obama has broken the law on multiple occasions. Despite clearly stating, in a 2008 questionnaire, that the commander-in-chief is not lawfully empowered to ignore treaties duly ratified by
the Senate, Obama has willfully failed to enforce the torture treaty, signed by Ronald Reagan and duly ratified by the Senate, that compels him to investigate and prosecute torture. As Sullivan put it earlier this year, “what Obama and Holder have done (or rather not done) is illegal.”
Obama also violated the War Powers Resolution, a law he has specifically proclaimed to be Constitutionally valid, when committing U.S. troops to Libya without Congressional approval. Or as Sullivan put it in 2011, “I’m with Conor. The war in Libya becomes illegal from now on. And the imperial presidency grows even more powerful.”
On the subject of war crimes, Sullivan wrote that “Obama and attorney-general Eric Holder have decided to remain in breach of the Geneva Conventions and be complicit themselves in covering up the war crimes of their predecessors – which means, of course, that those of us who fought for Obama’s election precisely because we wanted a return to the rule of law were conned.” In a separate entry, he went so far as to say that Obama is “a clear and knowing accessory to war crimes, and should at some point face prosecution as well, if the Geneva Conventions mean anything any more.” That seems rather farther than Noonan went in her column.
Sure. But none of those things disturb Noonan, who is on record as wanting to walk swiftly by the crime of torture in order to focus on an overwhelmed IRS office in Cincinnati. And the context of those questions was in response to her summary of three recent “scandals”. If the GOP were to go after the president on the questions above – all far more serious than the White House non-scandals – I’d be with them. But they aren’t. I agree with Conor on this. The real scandals are obvious and ignored. But not by this blog. Just by the GOP.
The Dish 