Lying Gasbag

Lawrence O’Donnell continues his idiotic crusade to convince the world that Eric Cantor doesn’t know how the American legislative process works. Cantor is certainly an idiot in many ways, but with equal certainty he knows how the American legislative process works as well as O’Donnell does.

The House passes hundreds of bills every year that have absolutely no purpose other than political posturing, and they do that no matter which party controls that body. Some of those bills make it through the Senate and become law, but still serve no useful purpose, such as laws proclaiming that the US supports some nonsensical cause because some legislator wanted to gain favor with a political donor.

The House passes some bills that it knows full well will never pass the Senate and, in fact, passes some because it knows they will never pass the Senate or even be brought to the floor of the Senate for consideration.

O’Donnell knows all of this very well, just as he knows that the “Government Shutdown Prevention Act” was political theater of the sort that the House has engaged in for many years. It was stupid, yes, but it hardly deserved the outrage that O’Donnell has heaped on it for three days, because the actual political implications of it are precisely zero.

He also continues his highly dishonest crusade against Senator Rand Paul regarding the passage of Senate Resolution 85, lying when he claims that Paul “voted for it” and lying when he claims that in doing so Paul authorized Obama to employ military force in Libya. He’s playing word games with the voting issue; no one “voted for” the resolution, it was simply that no one objected to its passage since it was essentially a meaningless bill.

But it doesn’t matter whether Paul voted for it or not since the bill does not, as O’Donnell dishonestly claims, provide authorization for the employment of military force in Libya, and O’Donnell knows very well that he is lying through his teeth when he claims that it does.

There is a vast difference between the Senate expressing a sense that it approves in principle of the United Nations considering the imposition of a no fly zone in Libya and the actual authorization of direct action by the United States. Even if that resolution had authorized the UN to act, that authorization would not have extended to the President, because the UN cannot order our President to act, and Congress cannot delegate its authority by treaty, statute or any means other than by amending the constitution using the procedure that is spelled out within that document.

O’Donnell knows all of that and is lying furiously in an effort to falsely discredit opponents of the President whom he slavishly and blindly worships.