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House Dems need to use ALL of their powers. Here's how.
Last edited Fri May 10, 2019, 01:39 PM - Edit history (1)
From Michelle Goldberg's op-ed in today's NY Times.
In the face of an administration that is trying to amass dictatorial powers, Democrats need to bring to bear all the powers of their own. Trump’s outright rejection of congressional authority makes impeachment proceedings necessary, but even impeachment alone is not sufficient.
Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democratic member of the Judiciary Committee and former constitutional law professor, points out that Congress has the power of “inherent contempt.” That’s a provision, last used in the 1930s, that allows the body to enforce its own orders, including by sending out the House’s sergeant-at-arms to arrest people.
snip
“I know that the Capitol Police are perfectly capable of holding people who violate the laws and rules of Congress, because lots of my constituents, specifically high school students, got arrested in our last Congress protesting at Speaker Paul Ryan’s office,” Raskin said. Short of arresting Barr, he said, Congress could use inherent contempt to directly levy fines. “We are going to dust off some old powers of Congress, and we are going to exercise all of the powers we have to vindicate the powers of the people,” he said.
Let’s hope so. There are dangers in increased Democratic combativeness, but even greater dangers in timidity. “Fighting constitutional hardball with constitutional hardball is a high- risk and potentially very treacherous path,” Levitsky, the co-author of “How Democracies Die,” told me on Wednesday. Yet he allows that there are moments when it may be necessary. When an autocrat is in power, he said, “either the opposition continues to play by the old rules and potentially gets steamrolled, and democratic institutions themselves may be left vulnerable, or the opposition fights back with constitutional hardball and risks escalation into an even worse constitutional crisis.” Neither of these are good options, but they’re the ones we have. If Democrats believe that the constitutional crisis has already begun, they ought to act like it.
Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democratic member of the Judiciary Committee and former constitutional law professor, points out that Congress has the power of “inherent contempt.” That’s a provision, last used in the 1930s, that allows the body to enforce its own orders, including by sending out the House’s sergeant-at-arms to arrest people.
snip
“I know that the Capitol Police are perfectly capable of holding people who violate the laws and rules of Congress, because lots of my constituents, specifically high school students, got arrested in our last Congress protesting at Speaker Paul Ryan’s office,” Raskin said. Short of arresting Barr, he said, Congress could use inherent contempt to directly levy fines. “We are going to dust off some old powers of Congress, and we are going to exercise all of the powers we have to vindicate the powers of the people,” he said.
Let’s hope so. There are dangers in increased Democratic combativeness, but even greater dangers in timidity. “Fighting constitutional hardball with constitutional hardball is a high- risk and potentially very treacherous path,” Levitsky, the co-author of “How Democracies Die,” told me on Wednesday. Yet he allows that there are moments when it may be necessary. When an autocrat is in power, he said, “either the opposition continues to play by the old rules and potentially gets steamrolled, and democratic institutions themselves may be left vulnerable, or the opposition fights back with constitutional hardball and risks escalation into an even worse constitutional crisis.” Neither of these are good options, but they’re the ones we have. If Democrats believe that the constitutional crisis has already begun, they ought to act like it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/opinion/constitutional-crisis-trump-pelosi.html
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