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3/7/2015 2:03:13 AM
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Boehner's invitation to Netanyahu unconstitutional

...what do you think the consequences will be for this? [quote]House Speaker John Boehner’s annoyance with President Barack Obama is turning into a grudge match against the Constitution. Boehner’s decision to invite a foreign head of government to address Congress without first consulting the sitting president has no precedent in American history. And for a simple reason. It’s unconstitutional. Boehner (R-Ohio) fully admits that his failure to communicate with the White House was not an oversight. Like a schoolboy passing notes when the teacher turns to the blackboard, he sneaked behind Obama’s back to set the date for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech with his country’s ambassador to the United States. Boehner asked the foreign dignitary not to tell the U.S. president. “I wanted to make sure,” Boehner later explained on Fox News, “there was no interference.” Netanyahu is now scheduled to address a joint session of Congress on March 3. This is unheard of in U.S. history. American Congresses have sometimes rejected a president’s foreign policy, of course. That is within their rights. Though the president has the power to negotiate agreements with foreign countries, the Senate can reject or approve them. President Woodrow Wilson, for example, journeyed to Paris in 1919 to negotiate the Treaty of Versailles after World War One. Wilson was instrumental in writing the treaty, particularly those sections that created a new institution, the League of Nations, to provide collective security.[/quote]

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  • Edited by Jones Burr: 3/7/2015 7:42:01 PM
    The Framers, operating against the backdrop of international law principles that held that the sovereign nations have a duty to receive ambassadors from other sovereign nations, determined, as Hamilton explained in Federalist No. 69, to impose this duty on the president as a matter of "convenience." Hamilton said that the authority "to receive ambassadors and other public ministers … is more a matter of dignity than authority. It is a circumstance which will be without consequence in the administration of government; and it was far more convenient that is should be arranged in this manner, than that there should be a necessity of convening the legislature, or one of its branches, upon every arrival of a foreign minister, though it were merely to take the place of a departed predecessor." Given Hamilton's explanation, there was no reason to view the "reception clause" as a source of discretionary policymaking authority for the president. In fact, Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution emphatically declares, "He shall, [not 'may'] receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers," an injunction that stands in sharp contrast with the discretionary constitutional powers that the president may choose to exercise, such as the decision to "convene both Houses" of Congress. Thus, the Framers, as James Madison wrote in 1793, gave the president no prerogative whatever to reject foreign ministers. Madison explained that "when a foreign minister presents himself, two questions immediately arise: Are his credentials from the existing and acting government of his country? Are they properly authenticated?" Those questions, Madison noted, "are merely questions of fact," and if answered affirmatively, [b]the president was duty bound to receive the minister. [/b] Obama violated the constitution not Boehner. The constitution gives no one the inherit power to invite diplomats, but the president must receive them. Obama didn't receive Netanyahu. It's not his choice, it's his duty.

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