No, that wasn’t ad hominem at all. He pointed out Sollum’s writing has weaknesses, not his person. He did call him a Libertarian, but around here that’s not an insult.
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No, Obama cannot just reschedule marijuana unilaterally. Doing that would put the US in violation of multiple international treaties to which it is a signatory, and only Congress can get us out of those treaties.
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Obama shows up for work, unlike the members of the House who are scheduled to work approximately 120 days this year, with the rest of their time mostly spent flying around the country to raise money outside their districts. In addition, many of them literally have no idea how to pass bills, because they get so little practice. And in interviews, they often reveal that they are guided by long debunked urban legends and conspiracy theories. And it’s ALEC and the Koch brothers writing the legislation that has resulted in cookie cutter voting and abortion laws in dozens of states.
As far as “whining impotently,” maybe you’d like to provide a few examples that could match the GOPs performance during the government shutdown. “Impotent” or not, Obama has no trouble putting his boot up the GOP’s ass.
BTW, the President doesn’t “write the legislation.”
Since the rise of the right wing goobersphere, we see this increasingly purified type of what is literally Orwellian “DOUBLESPEAK.” DOUBLESPEAK and DOUBLETHINK are mandatory in Oceania to avoid being tortured to death,.
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Hardly. The guy who ran wasn’t real. When he said he was going to stop lawless surveillance what he meant was he was going to make it legal, not that he was going to stop the practice. Of course he knew what people thought he meant, but he didn’t care that he was essentially lying. In many other instances he just blatantly lied. He justifies his lying by claiming that all politicians lie.
I just think he’s a big phony who has no real principles or beliefs, and who thinks no one else does either. His answers to Tapper were simple evasions, and he clearly doesn’t care if anyone believes him, or whether he can be fact checked afterwards. When he claimed that what the banksters did was immoral but not illegal, that was another lie that no one in a position to press him ever managed to sort out. In other words, he can lie because he knows no one will call him on it. And his “concern” for the problems with programs he is in total control of is the ultimate concern trolling bullshit.
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I don’t remember W having any trouble getting his agenda moving. When I voted for Obama in '08 I never thought he was a thoroughly unprincipled person, but what surprises me even more is that he is lazy as well. He doesn’t even bother to cover his lies with halfway reasonable sounding justifications. And its not just since he was reelected, he was making laughably false claims from day one.
Kleiman discusses only moving it to schedule II. What about III, IV or V? What about de-scheduling it completely (alcohol and tobacco, which are much more dangerous and deadly than marijuana, even according to the putz in chief himself, aren’t even scheduled)? And what about Kleiman’s claim about research? Obama hasn’t done that either. What would he have said if Tapper had asked him about that?
I’m no fan of libertarianism but Sullum’s piece was dead on regarding Obama’s feigned helplessness with regard to things he has total control over.
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why not? They add drugs to the list without congressional input, who says they can’t remove them?
Nice try. One is a principled act, the other is reckless and dangerous and clearly an abuse of power. You conflate the two and ruin your argument.
But rescheduling is clearly within the purview of the Executive branch. Its not undermining anything.
You need to define “legitimate” here. Because a law that is horribly unjust is not legitimate where I come from. It may “legal”, but its not just and its not moral. I’d love to see a president take a principled stand and challenge congress on its dithering lack of care for the immorality of its actions. The president has the power to pardon anyone for anything. Obama doesn’t use it at all. It tells you something about a person when that person, who has real power, won’t use it for just purposes (purposes the he himself espouses as just).
And you criticize a lot of Sullum’s other pieces, which are not really the subject of this post. But what about the predominant claim he makes here, that Obama talks as if he is outside his own administration all too much of the time, on very important issues.
I’d personally like to see a president who doesn’t care so much for “process” (which to me appears to be an easy reason to cop out on tough decisions) but instead cares about and rectifies government abuse when he’s able to. And in this instance he clearly has quite a bit of leeway. What he allowed his prosecutor to do to medical marijuana producers in Montana was incredibly vicious and immoral. But then Obama seems very comfortable with government abuse and viciousness in pretty much every sphere. He’s an authoritarian by nature, which is something he hid very well during his first election campaign.
People can try to justify Obama’s horrible presidency using whatever arguments they want, but in the end his actions speak for themselves. Has he done some good things? Sure. It would be amazing if he did nothing good in 8 years as the most powerful man in the world. Even that idiot W did some good things as president: pushing for and passing the medicare drug bill, his work with aids in South Africa. Hell, W even prosecuted his good buddy Ken Lay from Enron. Obama presided over the biggest criminal banking theft in the history of the world and somehow not one of the perpetrators lost their job, let alone managed to be prosecuted. He promised and we expected a hell of a lot more from Obama, and instead of that we got a conservative, thoroughly unprincipled liar who protects his meal ticket, pushes draconian police/surveillance state horrors, and then lies about it all. Constantly.
Its no fun for the Obama defenders these days, I know. But keep on trucking, I’m sure there’ll be a payoff one day.
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Neither you nor I nor anyone knows how many “laws” are in effect, to the practical reality that most of us are in violation in some way or another all the time.
The President’s “laws” are his Executive Orders, worse than many if not most laws ground out of the Congressional Sausage Works.
Your reply is facile and jejeune.
Some more Libertarian BS where they haven’t read the law. Obama doesn’t have the authority to change the classification of marijuana, at most he can enable studies so it can be reclassified much later. See the previous linked articles on what the law says.
But it should be.
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Why in God’s name would you say that?
Fewest executive orders than any administration in 100 years, also lagging far behind previous administrations in terms of scandals, zero members of the White House going to prison (Bush had several), and a fraction of the fatal embassy attacks we had under Bush.
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I don’t speak in ‘God’s’ name! I speak in my own voice. Obama is the current ‘puppet’; we’ll see who the next one is soon enough!
Ok, in your own unremarkable voice explain what’s “obvious” about the “black” and “woman” part.
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because congress wrote marijuana directly into the law as a schedule I controlled substance just like heroin. the controlled substances act allows additional substances to be added later to one or the other schedules by executive branch departments but unlike substances added later those substances listed in the law originally can only be removed from it by revising the law which is squarely in the hands of congress.
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