Low Crimes and Misdemeanors

The President has ordered Congress back to Washington for a joint session of Congress, to address the most pressing domestic issue of the day: jobs.

Ordinarily, this would not be newsworthy. The President, it seems, has given thousands of toothless speeches about jobs this year to little or no discernable effect.

What makes it newsworthy is the GOP’s response to the Presidential summons. Top House Republican leader Boehner has informed the President that the date of the joint session of Congress needs to be moved to accommodate a GOP primary debate scheduled elsewhere for that same night.

Forget about the fact that he GOP wants to the President move the address to a Friday night, when no one will be home in front of their TVs to watch it.

What’s important is that this is the same GOP that, by and large, claims to worship the Constitution like Moses coming down the mountain.

And Article II, Section 3 of that venerable document states explicitly, that “[The President] may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper.”

The ABC News tonight ended their coverage of the story with, “…so far, not even the date of the address has been confirmed.”

Yes, it has. It’s happening whenever the President says it is. There’s not even a conversation to be had. The President has full legal authority to order Congress back to Washington as he sees fit in the case of national emergency, which is how the GOP has been describing the jobs situation for months.

I say, if sitting Republican candidates fail to appear before the President as ordered, the matter should be turned over to the Attorney General for review.

The Constitution isn’t like the Bible, you don’t get to pick and choose the passages you want to live by. Once you swear to uphold it, to do anything less would seem to be an act bordering on dereliction of duty at the very least, and at worst a deliberate breach of their oaths of office.

Obama should sack-up, deliver his address as scheduled, and if any of the empty seats in the room were supposed to have been filled by the lcandidate lawmakers in question, throw them to the mercy of the Constitution they claim to revere but ignore in practice.