Remember
those WWJD bracelets that were so popular in the ’90s? Well, an expert
at the Law Library of Congress — a non-partisan branch of the Library
of Congress that has advised Congress and the Supreme Court since 1832
— tackled a slightly different question: What would George III do when
faced with a law he didn’t like?
Not even the King of England at the time of the American Revolution had
the authority to suspend laws unilaterally, the Law Library expert
wrote in a memorandum to the Senate committee tasked with responding to
President Obama’s recent executive orders on the enforcement of
immigration law.
“The
largest untapped constituency in American politics are the 300 million
American citizens who have been completely left out of the immigration
debate,” Sessions writes in the memo.
One hundred years before the American Revolution, another British king
had “attempted to suspend a number of laws,” contributing to the onset
of the Glorious Revolution in England, a senior foreign-law specialist
at the Law Library writes in the memo to the Senate Judiciary
Committee. “King George III,” the specialist goes on to remind the
committee, “was thus unable to enact or repeal any laws unilaterally
without the involvement of Parliament.”
The memo, obtained by National Review Online, was written in response
to a request by Senator Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), according to a top
aide in his office. It does not address the question of whether Obama’s
latest executive actions amount to a suspension of the laws, although
Obama and other Democrats referred to such orders as a decision to
“suspend” deportations. But it is a clear and incendiary jab at the
president, just days before House and Senate Republicans are scheduled
to attend a joint retreat in Pennsylvania to discuss their agenda for
the 115th Congress.
At the top of the list: Deciding on a response to Obama’s decision to
“suspend” deportations of millions of illegal immigrants, who will
instead receive some of the benefits of legal status. The GOP regards
Obama’s executive orders as a way of rewriting the law without
congressional input. House Republicans decided to use a Department of
Homeland Security–funding bill to block implementation of the orders
issued in November, as well as other related immigration-policy
decisions. That bill may struggle in the Senate, where some Republicans
up for reelection in Democratic-leaning states worry about a political
backlash.
One such Republican, Senator Mark Kirk (R., Ill.), told Politico that
the House bill “leads us to a potential government shutdown scenario,
which is a self-inflicted political wound for Republicans.” Senator
Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who helped write the Gang of Eight
immigration bill that died in the House, has signaled a willingness to
separate the DHS funding from an attempt to restrain Obama. “Defunding
that part of the bill that deals with enforcing the executive order
makes sense, but we can’t go too far here, because look what happened
in Paris,” Graham said last week. “The Department of Homeland Security
needs to be up and running.”
Sessions disagrees. “A constitutional breach of this magnitude demands
nothing less than a vigorous, public, disciplined campaign to rally the
nation behind a Republican effort to deny the president the funds he
would need to carry it out,” he writes in a 23-page “immigration
handbook” distributed to every congressional Republican on Monday and
obtained by NRO. To politicians who worry about losing votes over the
issue, Sessions replies by citing the midterm-election results and a
referendum in the blue state of Oregon that saw voters overturn a law
granting drivers’ licenses to illegal immigrants.
[Continued]
But
the executive also firmly emphasized a decision has not yet been made
and the story’s villain will be chosen for creative reasons— and to
avoid repetition—