Senate Judiciary Committee to Consider Bill To Forbid Trump from Firing Mueller, Which Would be Both Bipartisan and Unconstitutional

Absurd.

The legislation, from Sens. Christopher Coons (D-Del.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), would let Mueller, or any other special counsel, receive an "expedited judicial review" within 10 days of being fired to determine if it was for a "good cause." If it wasn't, the special counsel would be reinstated.

A friend snarked, "Oh? Is this bill also a constitutional amendment?"

The legislative branch cannot intrude into executive branch hiring and firing decisions.

The Independent Counsel law was widely viewed as unconstitutional precisely because it vested an executive function -- a prosecutor and entire staff -- in a non-executive branch (under the supervision of a three-judge judiciary branch panel).

That law was considered so constitutionally infirm that every independent counsel was seconded by a so-called "shadow prosecutor" from the executive branch, so that if any convictions were challenged on the grounds that the Constitution vests the executive power in the executive branch, not an counsel independent of the executive branch under the direction of judiciary branch personnel, the prosecutors could say "Hey, we were back-stopped by an actual legal executive branch prosecutor. So that makes it legit."

But at least there was a law in that case. In the current case, Congress wants to intrude on the executive branch by saying the executive branch has no power to fire its own employees -- its own inferior officers.

I think I'm almost out. I just got done watching House Republicans compete for a prime spot licking Mark Zuckerberg's underballs. They seemed corrupt to me -- why would No one ask if Zuckerberg's company had looked the other way when Obama for America scraped the entire "social media graph" of every Facebook user?

They seemed bought off to me. Actually cash-money bought off.

Yeah, I think I'm almost done here.

posted by Ace of Spades at 05:17 PM

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