At The Wall Street Journal, Kimberly Strassel reports that congressional Democrats are criticizing Speaker Boehner for having the House sue
President Obama. The issue came up at a House Rules Committee hearing.
The suit, which sues the president for unilaterally changing a core provision of ObamaCare, is a "political stunt," declared Ms. Slaughter. Republicans have "timed" it to "peak . . . right as the midterm elections are happening," said the ranking Rules member. Having failed to stop ObamaCare, they have chosen to "run to the judicial branch." And, she lectured, a "lawsuit against the president brought by half of the Congress" is "certainly" not the "correct way to resolve" a "political dispute."
Strassel points out,
however, that Slaughter herself was a plaintiff in a 2006 suit against President George W. Bush.
Democrats were sore that they'd lost a fight over a budget bill that made cuts to Medicaid and student loans. They dredged up a technical mistake—a tiny difference between the House and Senate version of the bill. Michigan Democrat John Conyers, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, decided to (how did Ms. Slaughter put it?) file a lawsuit against the president brought by half of the Congress. He was joined as a plaintiff by nearly every other then-ranking Democratic member and titan in the House— Charles Rangel, John Dingell, George Miller, Collin Peterson, Bennie Thompson, Barney Frank, Pete Stark, James Oberstar and Ms. Slaughter herself.
In an April 2006 Huffington Post piece titled "Taking the President to Court," Mr. Conyers explained that he was "alarmed by the erosion of our constitutional form of government," and by a president who "shrugged" about "the law." After "consulting with some of the foremost constitutional experts in the nation," he had determined that there was "one group of people" who were "injured" by Mr. Bush's lack of respect for "checks and balances": Congress. So he was "going"—or as Ms. Slaughter might put it, "running"—"to court."
