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Thread: Mark Levin: Justin Amash and Rand Paul wrong on the National Emergency Act

  1. #31
    Quote Originally Posted by Superfluous Man View Post
    So the executive branch has authority to spend money outside of the bounds Congress sets for how it is to be spent in its appropriation of that money, unless it's an earmark?

    That's a pretty ridiculous position.

    Would you have allowed Obama that same level of power to appropriate funds in defiance of how Congress appropriated them? He could take money that Congress appropriated for border control, complete with legislation outlining what agencies and functions were included within the scope of what that money was to fund, and give it to PBS instead, as long as he just didn't do that to earmarks?
    I don't think it is ridiculous at all. I think it is the original intent. It is just another example of how congress has willingly ceded their powers/authority to the executive branch.



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  3. #32
    Quote Originally Posted by specsaregood View Post
    I don't think it is ridiculous at all. I think it is the original intent. It is just another example of how congress has willingly ceded their powers/authority to the executive branch.
    It is utterly nonsensical and clearly is not the original intent.

    The Constitution says, "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law."

    If the law, passed by Congress, appropriates money to be used in various ways that the law delineates (as it always does in federal budgets, with or without earmarks), then spending that money outside of the scope of those delineations is drawing money from the Treasury not in consequence of appropriations made by Law.

    Your position would entail that Congress could pass a budget, and include within that budget some amount of money that is, according to that budget, "to be spent on tanks, planes, motorcycles, automobiles, and boats, but not at all on dog food," and since it's not earmarked, the President could decide to spend that money on dog food, and doing so wouldn't violate the part of the Constitution I just quoted.



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  5. #33
    Quote Originally Posted by Superfluous Man View Post
    It is utterly nonsensical and clearly is not the original intent.

    The Constitution says, "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law."

    If the law, passed by Congress, appropriates money to be used in various ways that the law delineates (as it always does in federal budgets, with or without earmarks), then spending that money outside of the scope of those delineations is drawing money from the Treasury not in consequence of appropriations made by Law.

    Your position would entail that Congress could pass a budget, and include within that budget some amount of money that is, according to that budget, "to be spent on tanks, planes, motorcycles, automobiles, and boats, but not at all on dog food," and since it's not earmarked, the President could decide to spend that money on dog food, and doing so wouldn't violate the part of the Constitution I just quoted.
    For your example, do all the funds appropriated in the budget say, "but not at all on a border wall"? if not, then your example does not apply.
    The executive branch could spend some of the money on those things and then use the rest elsewhere. That is how it currently is. You are arguing for how I say it SHOULD BE, every single penny earmarked and detailed exactly on what it should be spent on, every single line item. Not, "we are gonna give this department a few hundred billion, this other department a few hundred billion, etc. Use vague terms on what it is to be spent on, leave it up to the executive branch to decide the line items.
    Last edited by specsaregood; 03-06-2019 at 09:09 AM.

  6. #34
    Quote Originally Posted by specsaregood View Post
    For your example, do all the funds appropriated in the budget say, "but not at all on a border wall"? if not, then your example does not apply.
    I don't know if they do or not, but my example does apply to the argument you tried to make, which was that it didn't matter what the law said limiting how money was to be spent, unless it was an earmark.

    Do you now concede that that's not the case and that Congress can appropriate money, limiting via legislation how it is to be spent, by other means besides earmarks?

    Once you concede that, your entire argument vanishes.

    And then, if you want to say that the president had funds in the budget that he was free to spend on a border wall, you would have to show where in the budget those funds existed and how building a border wall fell within the scope of the legislation limiting how they were to be spent. You could no longer say that he was free to spend anything from anywhere in the budget that wasn't an earmark on the border wall.
    Last edited by Superfluous Man; 03-06-2019 at 09:44 AM.

  7. #35
    Quote Originally Posted by Superfluous Man View Post
    I don't know if they do or not, but my example does apply to the argument you tried to make, which was that it didn't matter what they law said limiting how money was to be spent, unless it was an earmark.

    Do you now concede that that's not the case and that Congress can appropriate money, limiting via legislation how it is to be spent, by other means besides earmarks?

    Once you concede that, your entire argument vanishes.

    And then, if you want to say that the president had funds in the budget that he was free to spend on a border wall, you would have to show where in the budget those funds existed and how building a border wall fell within the scope of the legislation limiting how they were to be spent. You could no longer say that he was free to spend anything from anywhere in the budget that wasn't an earmark on the border wall.
    So you refuse to concede the FDA could just be ordered to stop what it's doing and commit all its employees and budget to the wall?

    Gee, and I was growing fond of the idea...
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    We believe our lying eyes...

  8. #36
    Quote Originally Posted by acptulsa View Post
    So you refuse to concede the FDA could just be ordered to stop what it's doing and commit all its employees and budget to the wall?

    Gee, and I was growing fond of the idea...
    There are ways this power could be used for good, to be sure. But there are not ways that it could be used without the president violating his oath of office, for whatever that is still worth.

  9. #37
    Quote Originally Posted by Warlord View Post
    What do you think? This is a good debate!

    I actually listened to the whole video and I actually think he is right on this. It seems like Trump is not actually appropriating any extra money. He is just utilizing the money set aside for defense to build this wall.

    The part when I disagree is when he says that it is only controversial because it is Trump and the wall. i think it is also controversial because the legislative branch has debated this policy and denied Trump's request. So this is him going around congress to do what was already rejected by congress.

    What I don't understand is why Rand who has gone with just about every non liberty policy Trump has pushed would want to stand and die on this hill. Its not like anyone really expects him to follow the constitution anyways.

  10. #38
    Quote Originally Posted by juleswin View Post
    I actually listened to the whole video and I actually think he is right on this. It seems like Trump is not actually appropriating any extra money. He is just utilizing the money set aside for defense to build this wall.
    I don't think the budget has any money in it just set aside for "defense" without any more specificity than that, for the president to decide for himself just what constitutes defense.

  11. #39
    Quote Originally Posted by juleswin View Post
    I actually listened to the whole video and I actually think he is right on this. It seems like...
    Why does this not fill me with confidence? Oh, yeah...

    Quote Originally Posted by juleswin View Post
    Local and state police investigated the claims made by Lamar Mayor Darnell Byrd McPherson, who reported that on February 7 at 10 p.m. local time, someone sprayed her 2017 Symphony Silver Hyundai Elantra Sport and her husband’s soft-top 1998 Buick Roadmaster with a residue outside of their home.
    So lemme get this straight, her car and her husband's car that was parked in his garage were sprayed with this substance...
    ...I remember now.
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    We believe our lying eyes...

  12. #40
    Quote Originally Posted by Superfluous Man View Post
    I don't think the budget has any money in it just set aside for "defense" without any more specificity than that, for the president to decide for himself just what constitutes defense.
    No money set aside for emergencies?



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  14. #41
    Quote Originally Posted by juleswin View Post
    No money set aside for emergencies?

    Still CLAMORING for continuing tax paid incentives, government eminent domain, more government employees, restriction on travel...

    but nothing to do with RP and this site's mission.
    ____________

    An Agorist Primer ~ Samuel Edward Konkin III (free PDF download)

    The End of All Evil ~ Jeremy Locke (free PDF download)

  15. #42
    Quote Originally Posted by juleswin View Post
    No money set aside for emergencies?
    Of course not. Emergencies are for enlarging the budget when they occur.

    Why? Did you assume there was? Do you still think Vladimir Levin is right?

    When you assume, it doesn't make an ass of me. How about u?
    Last edited by acptulsa; 03-06-2019 at 11:01 AM.
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    We believe our lying eyes...

  16. #43
    Quote Originally Posted by acptulsa View Post
    Of course not. Emergencies are for enlarging the budget when they occur.

    Why? Did you assume there was? Do you still think Vladimir Levin is right?

    When you assume, it doesn't make an ass of me. How about u?

    His avatar and signature oppose each other, but the picture matching his post responses is worth a thousand million words.
    ____________

    An Agorist Primer ~ Samuel Edward Konkin III (free PDF download)

    The End of All Evil ~ Jeremy Locke (free PDF download)

  17. #44
    Quote Originally Posted by PAF View Post
    Still CLAMORING for continuing tax paid incentives, government eminent domain, more government employees, restriction on travel...

    but nothing to do with RP and this site's mission.
    I am just asking, I just assumed that they have some money set aside in the defense budget for emergencies. Site's mission statement aside, if this is true then does it mean Rand and Justin Amash are wrong?

  18. #45
    Quote Originally Posted by juleswin View Post
    No money set aside for emergencies?
    Sure. There's money for emergencies, like natural disasters. But again, not just as a generic line item without any limitations on what it's to be used for.

  19. #46
    Quote Originally Posted by acptulsa View Post
    Of course not. Emergencies are for enlarging the budget when they occur.

    Why? Did you assume there was? Do you still think Vladimir Levin is right?

    When you assume, it doesn't make an ass of me. How about u?
    Setting aside money for emergency in a budget is the sensible thing to do. I have money set aside for emergencies in my budget. If there is no money set aside for emergency, just tell me. You don't have to be like angie and immediately think that I make such assumptions because I am a communist.

  20. #47
    Levine
    Savage
    Hannity
    Alex Jones (the only one I can still listen to occasionally)

    I used to love listening to them all, until I realized they were Israel firsters' 2nd and 3rd, everything
    is make Israel Great , America 'serves' , and shall continue at all costs.

  21. #48
    Quote Originally Posted by Superfluous Man View Post
    Sure. There's money for emergencies, like natural disasters. But again, not just as a generic line item without any limitations on what it's to be used for.
    Thanks for not being an a**hole in your reply to my post. I would keep an open mind on this and maybe Levin would post on his website the wording on the portion of the budget where Trump plans on taking this money from.



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  23. #49
    Quote Originally Posted by juleswin View Post
    I am just asking, I just assumed that they have some money set aside in the defense budget for emergencies. Site's mission statement aside, if this is true then does it mean Rand and Justin Amash are wrong?
    Considering Amash and Rand have among the highest Constitutional Freedom Index Scores and Judge Nap chimed in the same, I would tend to lean toward liberty stances and reject that idiot moron.

    No. There is no setting this site's mission statement aside.
    ____________

    An Agorist Primer ~ Samuel Edward Konkin III (free PDF download)

    The End of All Evil ~ Jeremy Locke (free PDF download)

  24. #50
    Quote Originally Posted by juleswin View Post
    Setting aside money for emergency in a budget is the sensible thing to do.
    What part of the recent history of Washington, D.C. has you expecting sensible behavior?

    Why do you keep asking simple questions and expecting black and white answers? Are you not aware that Washington is full of lawyers, and they're all paid to make things complicated?

    Congress authorized billions to FEMA "for emergencies". Do you think it would be constitutional of Trump to spend all that on plugging up the southern border? Do you think there might be a political price to pay during hurricane season?

    Quote Originally Posted by juleswin View Post
    You don't have to be like angie and immediately think that I make such assumptions because I am a communist.
    I'm not Angela. And I know you make assumptions, and leap to conclusions that you can't get free of. I've seen you do it. Often.

    I don't try to analyze why.
    Last edited by acptulsa; 03-06-2019 at 11:21 AM.
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    We believe our lying eyes...

  25. #51
    Quote Originally Posted by acptulsa View Post
    What part of the recent history of Washington, D.C. has you expecting sensible behavior?

    Why do you keep asking simple questions and expecting black and white answers? Are you not aware that Washington is full of lawyers, and they're all paid to make things complicated?

    Congress authorized billions to FEMA "for emergencies". Do you think it would be constitutional of Trump to spend all that on plugging up the southern border? Do you think there might be a political price to pay during hurricane season?
    I am not talking about emergency funds with FEMA or department of education or health. I am talking about emergency funds set aside in the defense budget. Is there any money there set aside for emergencies there? what does the wording on the budget say? I don't think you know this now but I think as this progresses, we will know the answers to these questions.

  26. #52
    Quote Originally Posted by juleswin View Post
    I actually listened to the whole video and I actually think he is right on this. It seems like Trump is not actually appropriating any extra money. He is just utilizing the money set aside for defense to build this wall.

    The part when I disagree is when he says that it is only controversial because it is Trump and the wall. i think it is also controversial because the legislative branch has debated this policy and denied Trump's request. So this is him going around congress to do what was already rejected by congress.

    What I don't understand is why Rand who has gone with just about every non liberty policy Trump has pushed would want to stand and die on this hill. Its not like anyone really expects him to follow the constitution anyways.
    I listened to the first 45 seconds. That's about all I can stand from the traitor Levin. He is talking about how "Congress put the flexibility in for emergencies because congress doesn't ask fast enough." Two problems with Levin's "logic."

    1) Congress has already acted TWICE now. They just rejected Trump's proposal both times. So the idea that "congress isn't acting fast enough" is BS.

    2) Trump has already admitted there is no time sensitive emergency. About the wall Trump said ""I didn't need to do this. ... I just want to get it done faster, that's all."

    There is not a national security emergency on the border. There is a Trump political emergency. He made a phony campaign promise about a wall. He initially asked for 5 billion then allowed himself to get negotiated down to 1.6 billion for 2018. He declared "victory" but the jackass media said "Trump didn't keep his promise to build a wall." So some of his moronic supporters were like "The jackass media is right. Trump didn't build the wall. We want the wall!" And so.....here we are.
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.

  27. #53
    Quote Originally Posted by juleswin View Post
    I am not talking about emergency funds with FEMA or department of education or health. I am talking about emergency funds set aside in the defense budget. Is there any money there set aside for emergencies there? what does the wording on the budget say? I don't think you know this now but I think as this progresses, we will know the answers to these questions.
    So similies and metaphors cut no ice with you? Figures.

    OK. You don't get it, because you saw FEMA and stopped thinking rationally. Let's try again. Every penny in the defense budget for ambulances--buying ambulances, operating ambulances, paying civilian ambulance services--is for emergencies. Is it not? Is this the money you expect to see spent on a wall?

    You think we're going to find out what the wording in the defense budget is? Gosh, I hope not. My whole life their attitude has been, if they told us that they'd have to shoot us. You may suit yourself, but I'm not up for that today.
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    We believe our lying eyes...

  28. #54
    Quote Originally Posted by juleswin View Post
    I am not talking about emergency funds with FEMA or department of education or health. I am talking about emergency funds set aside in the defense budget. Is there any money there set aside for emergencies there? what does the wording on the budget say? I don't think you know this now but I think as this progresses, we will know the answers to these questions.
    Is there any real emergency? According to Mark Levin an emergency is when congress doesn't have time to act. But congress acted. So what is the emergency?

    Edit: This is really simple folks. If there is a hurricane congress doesn't have time to act so money needs to be moved around. Same thing if there is an earthquake or an actual invasion. Trump and his supporters calling a bunch of unarmed migrants an "invasion" doesn't make it so and doesn't make it an emergency. That said, the unarmed migrants [b]walked right up to the already existing wall!" This is stupid. And yes, some of my good friends on this forum have gone completely stupid over this immigration issue. They are as hyperbolic as Alexandria Ortega Cortez is about global warming and "In 12 years the earth is done" and all that crap.
    Last edited by jmdrake; 03-06-2019 at 11:32 AM.
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.

  29. #55
    Related:


    'Gun Violence Is the Real Emergency'

    Published on Feb 28, 2019


    Earlier this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told a group of supporters and journalists that in her view, gun violence is the real emergency. Such a statement, in the context in which she made it, should send shivers down the spines of all who believe in personal liberty protected by the Constitution.


    Notwithstanding the terrifying analogy she made about gun violence — terrifying to those who believe in the individual right to keep and bear arms as articulated by the Second Amendment and interpreted and upheld by the Supreme Court — Pelosi wasn't really speaking about guns. She was speaking about the presidency and the Constitution.


    Here is the back story.


    When President Donald Trump finally signed legislation two weeks ago to keep the federal government financed and open — legislation substantially similar to bills he had declined to sign in late 2018 and again in early 2019, bills that declined to give him the $5.7 billion he requested to build a wall at the southern border of the United States — he also issued a proclamation declaring a national emergency at the southern border.


    He based his emergency proclamation upon anecdotal evidence that more folks were attempting to enter the United States from Mexico than the Border Patrol and the southwestern states' safety nets could accommodate and that many of these would-be migrants were "bad people." He produced no evidence to back up his emergency claims. When 58 former high-ranking federal national security folks — including a former Democratic secretary of state and a former Republican secretary of defense — directly repudiated the president's stated basis for his emergency, the White House did not even respond.


    As well, weeks before he signed the emergency proclamation, President Trump repeatedly offered that the threat of it was just a negotiating technique aimed at bringing House Democrats to the White House for a sit-down. And as he was announcing the proclamation itself, he boasted that he "didn't need to do this."


    Trump's proclamation directed the departments of Defense and Homeland Security to divert unspent funds in their budgets — funds directed to be spent on specified items by legislation passed by Congress and signed by former President Barack Obama and by President Trump himself but not yet spent — to build a 55-mile stretch of what he says will be a 1,000-mile wall.


    As I have written in this column and articulated on Fox News Channel, such executive action is unlawful, as it constitutes a presidential intrusion into an area of federal behavior — spending money — that the Constitution reposes exclusively in the Congress. In the famous Steel Seizure Case in 1952, when President Harry Truman ordered the employment of nonunion workers at government expense to run strike-closed steel mills after Congress declined to do so, the Supreme Court blocked him from doing just what President Trump is attempting to do — spending money in defiance of Congress.


    A generation after the Supreme Court rebuked Truman — during the presidency of Gerald Ford — Congress did grant the president the power to declare emergencies, but these declarations cannot be contrary to the Constitution, and they cannot give the president more lawful authority than the Constitution gives him.


    Though the 1976 statute interestingly fails to define just what constitutes a presidential emergency, the courts have concluded that it consists of the onset of a sudden and unanticipated event that demands government action to preserve life, liberty or property — an event the ordinary levers of governmental power are insufficient to address. But it does not — and constitutionally cannot — authorize the president to spend money that Congress has expressly declined to spend.


    Now, back to Speaker Pelosi and her comment about guns. Her constitutional argument (and I agree with her, which rarely happens) is that not only may the president not spend contrary to congressional wishes but also he cannot claim that his own declaration of a national emergency gives him another source for presidential power — in this case, the ability to condemn private property and build a wall on it.


    All presidential powers come only from the Constitution — and from no other source. Were that not the case, were a president able to characterize any state of affairs as an emergency and thereby give to himself the lawful power to address it extraconstitutionally, that would do irreparable violence to the Constitution and would effectively transform the president into a prince.


    Under President Trump's theory of emergency powers, a President Pelosi could declare that gun violence is an emergency and then confiscate handguns. Or a President Cory Booker could declare that health care is an emergency and then spend unauthorized funds purchasing health insurance for those who lack it. Or a President John Bolton could declare that North Korea and Iran pose emergency threats to Los Angeles and New York, respectively, and then bomb the threatening countries back into the Stone Age.


    You can see the wisdom of Pelosi's slippery-slope fear. If President Trump can get away with this, there will be no stopping his successors — no matter who they are.


    The Constitution's separation of powers — Congress writes the laws, the president enforces them, the judiciary says what they mean; Congress declares war, the president wages war, the judiciary interprets the legal effects of war on domestic law — was not established to fortify any of the three branches. It was crafted to keep each of those branches out of the business of the other two — and thereby limit the reach of each branch and thus keep federal power separated and diffused.


    The Framers knew that separated and diffused federal power would reduce the near occasions for interfering with the personal liberty of everyone in America. That's why it is integral to the Constitution.


    http://www.judgenap.com/post/gun-vio...real-emergency
    ____________

    An Agorist Primer ~ Samuel Edward Konkin III (free PDF download)

    The End of All Evil ~ Jeremy Locke (free PDF download)

  30. #56
    Quote Originally Posted by juleswin View Post
    I am not talking about emergency funds with FEMA or department of education or health. I am talking about emergency funds set aside in the defense budget. Is there any money there set aside for emergencies there? what does the wording on the budget say? I don't think you know this now but I think as this progresses, we will know the answers to these questions.
    I think it's pretty safe to say that if building the wall fell within the scope of items that were already funded in the defense budget, Trump (if he honestly wants to even build this wall, which I'm not even sure of) would not have refused to sign the budgets that were sent to him already, and he would have never had to declare an emergency. He would have spent the money according to how it was already appropriated in the budget, and built the wall perfectly legally. He did this because he had lawyers telling him this was the only way he could spend money differently than the way it was appropriated.

    Nor is it the case that Trump is accessing funds from an item in the budget that includes funding for whatever the president wants as long as he first jumps through the hoop of declaring a national emergency. Trump is re-appropriating money for building the wall that the budget appropriated for other things, and he is using his national emergency declaration as a pretext for giving himself the power to do that.



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  32. #57
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    Is there any real emergency? According to Mark Levin an emergency is when congress doesn't have time to act. But congress acted. So what is the emergency?

    Edit: This is really simple folks. If there is a hurricane congress doesn't have time to act so money needs to be moved around. Same thing if there is an earthquake or an actual invasion. Trump and his supporters calling a bunch of unarmed migrants an "invasion" doesn't make it so and doesn't make it an emergency. That said, the unarmed migrants [b]walked right up to the already existing wall!" This is stupid. And yes, some of my good friends on this forum have gone completely stupid over this immigration issue. They are as hyperbolic as Alexandria Ortega Cortez is about global warming and "In 12 years the earth is done" and all that crap.
    I have read your last replies to me and I agree what is going on is not an emergency but if it was a real emergency(real space aliens trying to land invade via the southern border) then he could move funds around to build the wall right? The frustrating part about this is that this whole debate could have been completely avoided had Trump just gotten money for his wall during the last two years. I don't think for a split second that Trump wants to build this wall, so why is Rand falling for his con? I would not have been the obstacle he is clearly looking for if I was him.

  33. #58
    Quote Originally Posted by PAF View Post
    Related:

    Yep. "Gun violence" most definitely will be next up on the "emergency" agenda. But hey, at least we'll have PART of a wall.
    Chris

    "Government ... does not exist of necessity, but rather by virtue of a tragic, almost comical combination of klutzy, opportunistic terrorism against sitting ducks whom it pretends to shelter, plus our childish phobia of responsibility, praying to be exempted from the hard reality of life on life's terms." Wolf DeVoon

    "...Make America Great Again. I'm interested in making American FREE again. Then the greatness will come automatically."Ron Paul

  34. #59
    Quote Originally Posted by juleswin View Post
    I have read your last replies to me and I agree what is going on is not an emergency but if it was a real emergency(real space aliens trying to land invade via the southern border) then he could move funds around to build the wall right? The frustrating part about this is that this whole debate could have been completely avoided had Trump just gotten money for his wall during the last two years. I don't think for a split second that Trump wants to build this wall, so why is Rand falling for his con? I would not have been the obstacle he is clearly looking for if I was him.
    Time will tell, but I think Rand has outflanked Trump. He came up with a way to fund the wall and actually get Mexico (or at least private Mexicans) to pay for it. At some point Rand needs to separate himself from Trump if, for no other reason, than to keep the movement his dad started from being completely co-opted and imploding. People who used to believe in liberty are showing an increasing willingness to throw liberty away in the name of "protecting" it from those "terrible democratic leaning Latinos" as if this movement was all about preserving the two party system. Face scanning cameras put in by Trump via executive order? *crickets* Trump banning gun accessories via executive order? Or he really just did that so that it would get struck down by the courts. *SMDH!* Any illusions that I might have had that Rand would be able to "fake teocon" his way into the White House were shattered by the TrumpTrain. Rand went from proposed front runner to irrelevant in a matter of months. He will never be president. He will also not lose his senate seat. Not over this. All politics are local. Rand's popularity in Kentucky is through the roof. And Trump cannot afford to alienate the GOP senators that are going against him on this emergency wall declaration. Mark my words, the democrats a licking their chops over the possibility of impeaching Trump. They've got the votes in the House to impeach but they are not even close in the Senate. But if Trump ticks off enough GOP senators, all bets are off.
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.

  35. #60
    Quote Originally Posted by Superfluous Man View Post
    I think it's pretty safe to say that if building the wall fell within the scope of items that were already funded in the defense budget, Trump (if he honestly wants to even build this wall, which I'm not even sure of) would not have refused to sign the budgets that were sent to him already, and he would have never had to declare an emergency. He would have spent the money according to how it was already appropriated in the budget, and built the wall perfectly legally. He did this because he had lawyers telling him this was the only way he could spend money differently than the way it was appropriated.

    Nor is it the case that Trump is accessing funds from an item in the budget that includes funding for whatever the president wants as long as he first jumps through the hoop of declaring a national emergency. Trump is re-appropriating money for building the wall that the budget appropriated for other things, and he is using his national emergency declaration as a pretext for giving himself the power to do that.
    Ofc, I don't think there is any money set aside for the wall, nobody is saying that. What Levin is saying is that there is open ended money in the budget set aside for emergencies that can be used to build the wall. I also agree that this is Trump trying to fool his supporters into thinking he is sincere about building the wall.

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