Keystone, Veto Threats, And Constitutional Headscratching [UPDATED/Resolved]

When is a Presidential veto threat not a Presidentail veto threat? When it is presented as reported by The Hill:

The White House said on Tuesday that President Obama would veto legislation that approves construction of the Keystone XL pipeline if it passes Congress. 

"If this bill passes this Congress the president won't sign it either," White House press secretary Josh Earnest vowed Tuesday of the pending Keystone legislation.

The WaPo had this:

President Obama would veto a bill that would allow for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, the White House said Tuesday.

"If this bill passes this Congress, the president wouldn’t sign it," said White House press secretary Josh Earnest.

The NY Times also ran the 'won't sign" language. Until we see the full transcript (WhiteHouse.gov) for more context, that is the best we've got. And it's not good enough! [But the language in the UPDATE is a clear veto threat.] Lest you have forgotten your civics, here we go:

Bill becomes law without president's signature
When Congress is not adjourned, and the president fails to either sign or veto a bill sent to him by the end of the 10-day period, it becomes law without his signature.

We all remember the "pocket veto", where the President simply holds the bill while Congress adjourns within the ten-day window.

But a threat to "not sign" a bill is different from a threat to send it back with a veto message. Is this deliberate ambiguity, or just a chronic inability to articulate a clear message? well, if this is one more case of the mumble-mouths, at least it is only baffling a domestic audience and not, e.g, Putin or Kim Jong-Un. 

One would hope that our Capitol Hill reporters would appreciate these Constitutional distinctions in presenting the news and the nuance, but who knows? In any case, this sort of parsing will be the daily norm under President Hillarity, so let's warm up now.

Pending clarification, we score this a Hmm...

ERRATA: This is more than a century old but even Ezra can follow Article I Section VII; still, I emphasized the key bit:

Section. 7.

All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law. But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively. If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law.

UPDATE: From the National Journal:

"I can confirm that the president would not sign this bill," Earnest said at a White House press briefing when asked about legislation set to advance in Congress this week that would green-light the project.

"We indicated that the president would veto similar legislation considered by the previous Congress, and our position on this hasn't changed," Earnest said. "I would not anticipate that the president would sign this piece of legislation."

That is clear enough.

MAJOR PROPS TO AN UNNAMED REPORTER. From the WH transcript, after much back and forth:

Q    Thanks, Josh.  The language you used on the Keystone issue -- you said that the President would not sign it.  If I remember civics correctly, that's different from a veto.  Are we correct in reporting this as a veto threat?
 
MR. EARNEST:  Yes.

 

Comments

[Captain Hate]

Exactly, James; the French take being French very seriously. They irritated the hell out of the krauts by upping their energy independence by building lots of nukes on the border.

[peter]

I guess we'll be waiting for all the free speech advocates in this country to condemn this latest act of mass murder; utterly disgusting. we are at war on several fronts, and we don't even have the balls to say it out loud

[Soylent Red]

I'm probably the only person here who thinks that at some point, probably soon, the French will clamp down hard on the koranimals and probably kick most of them out.

You misunderestimate the level of self-loathing present in the collective French psyche, and the economic requirement for a permanent underclass of North Africans for the French welfare state.

A couple of baddies will be rounded up and tossed in a posh French prison with a view of the Seine and wine with dinner.

[Janet]

the French take being French very seriously.

Well, we will see. Maybe they'll just call it workplace violence like we did. Don't want to hurt the feelings of the Islamic nuts.

[Jane]

The suburbs of Paris are nothing short of scary.

[Miss Marple]

Hollande said it was without a doubt terrorism.

The shooters have not been apprehended.

France is at its highest alert level.

[NKvirusedand back]

7+ years ago a Dutch woman from town who was on the group trip to Japan, discussed with me the future of the Dutch and French et al. In my typical blunt style I said IMO there are only two possible outcomes, Western Europe is Muslim in our lifetime, or religious Muslims are deported, no matter if they were Dutch born.... in a NYC second she said deported. She's a tough lady, but she said it in a cold and determined way. TBD. JiB who has inlaws in Belgium, I believe thinks it will be Sharia for the Belgians and Dutch.

[NKvirusedand back]

So while Fat Chris was partying with Jerry J, his Blue Hell took another step towards bankruptcy... ze Jermanz bail on Jersey. M-B abandons its longtime Jersey home for Hot-Lanta; 1000 very high paying jobs go pffft. Heck of a job Chris.

[Janet]

Who do you call when your government has checked out?...doesn't enforce laws?

We're in the same place.
Hopefully the thousands of Syrians comin' here don't mind cartoons. Does the State Dept. ask them?

[NKvirusedand back]

BTW-- the AFP report on the 'terrorist attack' by a 'Martin Bureau' is disgraceful.

[Miss Marple]

Captain Hate,

I see you have forgotten Newt with Pelosi on the sofa, as well as how he swore he would speak about the China missile secrets sale every day on the floor until he got answers. Then he clammed up after he had a meeting with Clinton, late at night, by himself.

Only later did we learn that he was having an affair,very reckless behavior when he was also involved in attacking Clinton over his lying about a sex scandal.

His favorite president is Franklin Roosevelt.

And, I repeat my vignette about how Newt operates:

after Katrina, with all of the criticisms of Bush, he got on TV and criticized too, and then said what Bush needed to do was start a Marshal Plan for the Gulf Coast (massive injection of money from the federal government).

Ten months later, after all of the waste, fraud and corruption surfaced, he got on TV AGAIN and this time said, "Well that's what happens when government does this instead of the private sector."

I have never gotten over him doing a 180, and the ONLY reason he did so was to be able to bash Bush on national television.

I would also point out that when he was running for president he had almost no support for representatives who were in Congress with him.

Being Speaker isn't about talking.

[Jeff Dobbs]

Hey Sue - I know you know, but figure I'd mention -- woot woot to Dirk for passing Moses for 7th place on the all time scoring list.

Doesn't look like he'll catch Shaq for 6th place this season...he'd have to play every remaining game and average 26 per to do it. He's averaging 18 so far this season.

If he stayed healthy and continued in the 18-20 point range . . . he'd have to play two more seasons to catch Wilt for 5th, and three more seasons to catch Jordan for 4th.

No idea if he's ever said anything to this point about how much longer he thinks he'll play...

Hey, look, the Mavs play the Pistons tonight . . . who's up for some more Dallas-Detroit trash talking!

[henry]

Well as far as trash talk goes, a tweet from Walker.

[Iggy]

Newt is poster boy for the Peter Principle.
He was a great opposition minority leader hamstringing the corrupt Wright Dem majority.
He was an excellent architect of an insurgency designed to overthrow that majority.
He was a supreme tactician.

But either he or someone else unfortunately convinced him he was also great at strategy, out-front political leadership and worst of all a Great Mind. His grand sweeping teachable moments as some grandiloquent, hackneyed history professor and Alvin Toffler acolyte were cringingly embarrassing and demonstrated an almost unhinged hubris and grandiosity.
Newt is a guy the Magnum Force Dirty Harry could never abide because he has never been a man who has known is limitations.

He would have made a marvelous Roman Senator of the dying Republic however, with an olive wreath wrapped around his corpulent noggin, a pork chop in his right hand and Callista all up under his toga.

[Jeff Dobbs]

Shocking Stat: 1 in 5 women at college girls attending the U.S. Senate ceremonial swearing-in yesterday will be were sexually assaulted by the time they graduate Joe Biden.

[Captain Hate]

Miss Marple, Newt's overwhelming ego and need for attention has always been his worst trait while out of office and sometimes when in. I still think he was a better Speaker of the House than Boehner.

[jimmyk on iPad]

If there had been previous attacks thwarted, it's hard to understand why there wasn't security there. There was even this:

A reporter for Britain’s Telegraph newspaper in Paris told Sky News that the first officers to arrive fled after seeing two or three gunmen armed with automatic weapons and possibly a grenade launcher.

[Extraneus]

Newt taught me to keep my mouth shut upon obtaining a position of power. His inability to do so was his fatal flaw.

Btw, the French surely must retaliate in a major way now. They can't let this stand.

[Captain Hate]

Hey, look, the Mavs play the Pistons tonight . . . who's up for some more Dallas-Detroit trash talking!

I stand with Sue in support of the Mavs. Although the Pistons are the newest example of the importance of chemistry in basketball by out and out releasing Josh Smith, a very talented power forward who apparently didn't work and play well with others and represented Joe Dumars's last terrible move as GM. Since taking him off the roster the Pistons have been on a tear, beating the Spurs last night in San Antonio. Now Smith is with Houston, where he joins fellow head cases Dwight Howard and James Harden.

[Beester]

I don't follow pro basketball, prefer college hoops. So no trash talk on the D-D clash from me.

The clash of civilizations is on display this morning. The French reaction will be instructive. May they be as ruthless as the terrorists.

[clarice]

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2015/1/7/1599/06646/crimenews/Jane-Doe-s-Lawyers-File-Defamation-Suit-Against-Dershowitz

Jeralyn on the ridiculous filing by Roberets' counsel.

[clarice]

doT, sorry if I mischaracterized your views. It was inadvertant, old timers'.

[clarice]

The nuts of Jeralyn's analysis:My immediate reaction is that it's like half a ham sandwich minus the mustard. It contains no information as to why Alan Dershowitz' allegations about the lawyers are false. It provides no support for their or their client's accusations of criminal conduct by Dershowitz and no details of anything they did to verify her information. They offer no reason for why they believe their client is telling the truth about Dershowitz.

Instead, it sidesteps the issue and offers an explanation for why they made the allegations in the first place (to enhance the chances the federal court would grant their motion to add Jane Doe #3 (Roberts) and Jane Doe #4 to the existing victims' rights case involving their other clients, Jane Does #1 and #2.) That's not the same thing.

Second, I think they just played right into Dershowitz' hands by giving him a judicial forum to litigate the truth or falsity of the lawyers' and their client Roberts' allegations. The likelihood that the federal judge in the victims' rights suit would grant Dershowitz' motion to intervene was iffy, given the judge's denial of a previous motion to intervene by another lawyer claiming Cassell and Edwards had made false statements about him, despite Dershowitz' attempt to distinguish the two motions. (See my earlier posts on this.) I'm looking forward to seeing Dershowitz' counterclaim. Also, now he gets to conduct discovery and take depositions. He's no longer a fringe player but a party, with more legal tools at his disposal.

[clarice]

David Goldman
Along with journalists and writers everywhere I mourn our murdered colleagues at Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical weekly that had the courage to poke fun at Islam, and paid a horrendous price. This is a new and terrible step on the part of the terrorists: they have threatened individual journalists for years and forced a few into hiding or witness protection. But the assault on the premises of a news organization and the massacre of it staff is an entirely new thing. We have never seen anything like this before in the sorry history of terrorism.

How will France respond?

France now faces an existential dilemma. By most independent estimates France now has a Muslim population of 6 million, or almost 10% of its 65 million people. If we assume that just 1% of this population are radicalized to the point of engaging in or providing support for terrorist activities, that is a pool of 60,000 individuals. We are not speaking of 60,000 potential bombers or shooters, but a support network that will allow a much smaller number of terrorists to blend into the broader population. In the "no-go" zones of France now effectively ruled by Muslim gangs, moreover, the terrorists can intimidate the Muslim population. France already has lost the capacity to police part of its territory, which means that it cannot conduct effective counter-terror operations

To put that number in context, the whole prison population of France is less than 70,000, of whom 60% are Muslims. It only takes a few dozen trained terrorists with an effective support network to bringing ordinary life to a stop in a major city. France has had the toughest enforcement policy against radical Islam among the major European nations, as Daniel Pipes observes. But French security clearly has been overwhelmed. The use of assault rifles and (reportedly) a rocket launcher by highly-skilled gunmen in the center of Paris is a statement of contempt towards the authorities on the part of the terrorists.

The means by which France could defeat the terrorists are obvious: To compel the majority of French Muslims to turn against the terrorists, the French authorities would have to make them fear the French state more than they fear the terrorists. That is a nasty business involving large numbers of deportations, revocation of French citizenship, and other threats that inevitably would affect many individuals with no direct connection to terrorism. In the short term it would lead to more radicalization. The whole project of integration as an antidote to radicalism would go down the drain. The effort would be costly, but ultimately it would succeed: most French Muslims simply want to stay in France and earn a living.

There is no good outcome here, but the worst outcome would be the degeneration of France into a hostage state

[daddy]

Joe Trippi says we can't call this Islamic Terrorism because we don't know yet who did this and why they did this.

Horseshit.

Great point by Jonah Goldberg in response. If the assumption is that we don't know this is Islamic, then why is John Kerry mentioning an Imam in his comments to the French? Why that non-sequiter if this isn't about Islam?

[Jane]

Obama just said "this civilization that is so central to our imaginations" in his remarks about France. WTF?

[Jane]

Clarice,

Here is what I find interesting about the Jane Doe suit - people on both sides attest to the honor, credibility, talent and honesty of both sides. (Last night Lis Weihl was all agog at the fact that Cassell was a former, very reputable federal Judge, and Ann Coulter called him the best lawyer in the country today.) I've never heard a word to the contrary.

Same on the other side. Even conservatives defend Dershowitz as honorable and not the type and Jerylyns remarks about Weinberg are notable.

Pass the popcorn, as Dot says. The only bad part is all this concentration on Dershowitz detracts from the allegations against Clinton.

All I can say is there must be some pretty convincing evidence out there.

[Jane]

BTW, Dershowitz' affidavit was unimpressive as far as I'm concerned - all those free rides and free vacations makes him look like Menedez or Al Sharpton.