Aw, Who Needs that Whole Senate Ratification Anyhow?
Errr…is this legal?
MOSCOW — With the clock running out on a new US-Russian arms treaty before the previous Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, expires on December 5, a senior White House official said Sunday said that the difficulty of the task might mean temporarily bypassing the Senate’s constitutional role in ratifying treaties by enforcing certain aspects of a new deal on an executive levels and a “provisional basis” until the Senate ratifies the treaty.
“The most ideal situation would be to finish it in time that it could be submitted to the Senate so that it can be ratified,” said White House Coordinator for Weapons of Mass Destruction, Security and Arms Control Gary Samore. “If we’re not able to do that, we’ll have to look at arrangements to continue some of the inspection provisions, keep them enforced in a provisional basis, while the Senate considers the treaty.”
If it’s not ratified, then it’s not a treaty. The White House can call it whatever it wants, but I’d imagine that any agreement with Russia, no matter whether it is just a group of “provisions” or not, has to be ratified by the Senate in order to be legal and binding. Otherwise, it’s just a case of the President (who apparently taught Constitutional law, so he should know this) “shredding the Constitution”, which is a phrase I vaguely recall hearing tossed at some President in the recent past.
Then again, he seems to see the Constitution as something that gets in his way a lot.
UPDATE: Smitty, that’s one nasty thought you had right there.
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Category: Alliances and Allies, The World At Large
scary stuff.
Legal?
What's with this hopelessly Conservative talk?
This is an emergency, man!