Friday has come and it brings the promise of a weekend of work. I am deep in the middle of generating an Order on a case regarding the denial of a license to a business entity. Some research will be involved but an argument full of filigree and a web like pattern of precise words will be called for. The more silence I have the more I can move that project along. Not easy, but more rewarding than the usual day to day evaluation of claims of redemption that I have to hear.
As I read the headlines I think the country is headed for a constitutional crisis. The President is planning to declare a notional emergency to circumvent his inability to get some funding he wants from Congress.
Some emergencies are easy to identify, fires destroying thousands of homes and hurricanes doing likewise. Others like a claim of a massive drug incursion into society or a threat of illegal immigrants are much harder to pin down as emergencies. Natural disasters, attacks by armed insurgents these are the stuff emergency declarations are for. Illegal immigration stands out out as something that does not have the suddenness, the exigency, that requires “emergency” action.
If he goes ahead and declares an “emergency” the next two years will be total gridlock. The matter will invariably be taken into court and all cooperation in the Congress will stall. A declaration of an economic emergency has failed in the past. From my perspective despite the hyperbole this does not seem to be an “emergency” as much as an end run around constitutionally established balances of power. Hey, it is uncharted territory but seems like a dangerous precedent to set. It really kind of implies a shift in the allocation of power under the Constitution, one that if it stands will arise by executive fiat.
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