Where are the Lawyers?
Over 100 members of congress are lawyers.
Most, if not all, of the Senators have law degrees.
They swear an oath to the constitution to defend it.
The American Bar Association is now calling this a violation of the rule of law.
Will they listen?
Do they care?
The overwhelming evidence is that they all place their careers first, and the law, even morality second. But their careers are over anyway. And one day we all die.
Do they want to die knowing they had a long career but let the law go? Or do they want to die knowing they stayed true to their oaths, as Senators, as lawyers, and as Americans?
I’m afraid the answer is already becoming clear.
As the American Bar Association said today:
Instead, we see wide-scale affronts to the rule of law itself, such as attacks on constitutionally protected birthright citizenship, the dismantling of USAID and the attempts to criminalize those who support lawful programs to eliminate bias and enhance diversity.
We have seen attempts at wholesale dismantling of departments and entities created by Congress without seeking the required congressional approval to change the law. There are efforts to dismiss employees with little regard for the law and protections they merit, and social media announcements that disparage and appear to be motivated by a desire to inflame without any stated factual basis. This is chaotic. It may appeal to a few. But it is wrong. And most Americans recognize it is wrong. It is also contrary to the rule of law.
This is a fight, at every level, in every way. The rule of law is literally on the line. I don’t give a damn what you wanted, this is what we face.
I agree wholeheartedly. Almost every member of Congress puts their careers above defending the law, doing what is ethically and morally right, and REPRESENTING their constituents rather than their corporate sponsors.
Trump wouldn’t uphold the law (if he even knew what it was) and I suspect he has never read the constitution. Again, even if he had read the constitution he would feel no compunction to uphold it. None of this should surprise anyone in congress or any attorney anywhere. I realize that he’s out Trumped himself but they should have expected some crazy moves, he made many of his plans public long before the election. He was clear about his intent to authorize Musk, an unelected individual, to have tremendous authority over all government spending. It would appear that some independent legal organizations dedicated to preserving constitutional rights were either prepared or able to rally on the spot filing law suits seeking injunctions.
I may be too cynical but I don’t hold out much hope for lawyers in Congress or Congress in general. They all sat mute (until the last few months when Bernie rallied 19 Senators to oppose continued arming of Israel) while they not only witnessed a genocide they repeatedly voted to continue funding the genocide, a genocide only made possible because of our funding. They were silent for 15+ months, knowing that the bombs they voted to send were indiscriminately murdering tens of thousands of innocent people, mostly women and children. They knew it was genocide, multiple independent investigations determined it to be genocide, genocide scholars around the globe reached the same conclusion. They knew they were committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. They knew the support for these atrocities was illegal under both US and international law. If they didn’t know their actions were illegal they aren’t fit to sit in congress. Yet, with very few exceptions, they jumped on the bandwagon, the law be dammed, and ensured their electoral wins and continued campaign funding with every vote to commit the highest crime on earth - democrats and republicans alike. They had no concerns about the police brutality against college kids who had far more guts than they, who stood up for international law and the lives of innocent people. Constitutional rights, freedom of speech and assembly, were of no concern to them if that speech and assembly might apprise the American people of how they were spending their tax dollars, while saying they couldn’t afford disaster relief here and a multitude of other legitimate needs here.
The democrats, whose previous administration was responsible for unspeakable horrors, the worst acts in this century and before, with their full support will now suddenly become the moral arbiters of government overreach, demanding the constitution and the laws of this country be upheld. I find it reprehensible, a level of cynicism that even I, a cynic with little to no respect for our “representatives”, is repulsed by.
Where was the ABA when Biden and company were violating US and international law? If I missed their stand against the actions of the administration and Congress, I apologize.