“The Constitution is plain as day that any international treaty that compels certain actions by the United States requires a two-thirds ratification by the Senate,” writes Patrick J. Michaels, director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute.
Read here from Mr. Michaels how President Obama is playing “fast and loose” with the Constitution with a sweeping international climate change treaty.
How on God’s getting-greener earth can the president think the nation can be “compelled,” absent the two-thirds vote of the Senate explicitly required by the Constitution? After all, his proposal, which will be unveiled by Mr. Obama himself at the United Nations’ Climate Summit on Sept. 23 will “legally require” participants “to enact domestic climate change policies,” according to the Times. Isn’t that up to the standard of a binding international treaty?
Well, harking back to his predecessor in the halcyon 1990s, Mr. Obama is playing fast and loose with the Constitution. In his mind, it might “depend on what the meaning of is is.” Mr. Obama wants to write this “accord,” not as a new treaty, but as an addition to the already-ratified 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change.
That’s not going to cut it. It’s already been done. That’s what the failed Kyoto Protocol and the purpose of Mr. Obama’s new codicil “is” to replace it. The Kyoto Protocol never did get the required two-thirds vote to be ratified by the Senate. The same will apply here.
A king in any area rules by absolute power. The fact of the matter is that Mr. Obama is obsessed with climate change, even as the voters of this country, who speak through their legislatures, most assuredly are not. That’s not his worry, though. He can’t be re-elected, and he doesn’t really care if, as retribution, the Democrats lose control of the Senate in this year’s election.
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