IIPTDXTTNMIAFB are the Ethics Alarms initials for “Imagine if President Trump did X that the news media is accepting from Biden.” The phenomenon has been a theme of the Biden Presidency Ethics Train Wreck so far: The Washington Post isn’t keeping an archive of Biden’s lies like they did for President Trump (and most of what they archived weren’t lies anyway), and Biden has arguably engaged in far more substantive and deliberate untruths in less than two years than Trump did in four. It was a recent Biden lie of breathtaking audacity that reminded me to write about this issue: over the weekend just passed, Biden told an interviewer regarding his student loan debt bailout: “It’s passed. I got it passed by a vote or two.”
No, this was an Executive Order. It wasn’t a bill, it wasn’t voted on by Congress, and it didn’t “pass”—that’s exactly why it is unconstitutional. The scary possibility is that Biden actually thinks it did pass, but I refuse to accept “He’s senile, and doesn’t know what the hell is going on” as a defense for such blatant falsehoods.
Prof. Turley, who is becoming increasingly outraged at the Democratic Party’s disregard and disrespect for the Constitution, blasted away at Biden’s deliberate defiance of the law of the land in a recent post. Noting that Biden falsely (or ignorantly) boasted that the courts “are on his side” regarding the illegal EO despite the fact that the initial law suits blocking it were rejected on procedural and not substantive legal grounds (amazingly, Biden went to law school), Turley fumed…
No one could possibly read these decisions as even remotely supporting Biden’s claim to have virtually absolute authority to give away roughly $500 billion owed to the American people shortly before a critical midterm election….
Overwhelming constitutional concerns are raised by this massive election-year giveaway. Biden simply announced that he would forgive up to $10,000 in student loan debt for borrowers earning less than $125,000 annually; those who received Pell grants could receive up to $20,000 in relief; couples can qualify despite a joint annual income of $250,000. No vote of Congress — just hundreds of billions of dollars written off by Biden, as if he is an American tsar….
The legal claim behind the law is transparently opportunistic. It is based on the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students (HEROES) Act of 2003. As the acronym indicates, this short bill was designed for military personnel who often found themselves in arrears while serving abroad. It allows the Education Secretary to grant student loan relief during a war, military operation or national emergency. But nothing in the barely five-page act supports a sweeping and unprecedented waiver of billions of dollars in loans owed to the government.
Even for the military personnel intended to benefit from this program, the law only allowed waivers or modifications to guarantee that they were not “placed in a worse position financially in relation to that financial assistance because of their status as affected individuals.”
Yet, legal realities rarely seem to be a deterrent for this president. The Biden administration has racked up an impressive litany of losses in court, including many decisions finding that the administration has engaged in racial discrimination or simply exceeded Biden’s constitutional authority.
Biden has been remarkably open in the past about treating unconstitutionality as a mere technicality when trying to spend federal funds. When Biden called for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to impose a nationwide moratorium on the eviction of renters, he admitted that his White House counsel and their chosen legal advisers told him that the move was likely unconstitutional.
Despite the overwhelming opinion of experts to the contrary, Biden suggested he could get as much money out the door as possible before being barred by the courts. But the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the order was unconstitutional.
The tuition forgiveness program is based on the same cynical tactic.
Intentionally violating the Constitution is, unlike the grounds for the two partisan House impeachments of President Trump, legitimately impeachable conduct, but the biased and irresponsible mainstream media is, as usual, cheerleading for Biden’s breach. The ends justify the means to progressives, and Biden’s giveaway, even if it fails, might help sweep away some of the Red Tide that looms ahead in the upcoming election. Biden’s is a good violation of the Separation of Powers and the Constitution, you see, because he is doing it to “protect democracy.”
No, of course that makes no sense. Yet that is what Joe’s defenders want us to believe. If this continues, and it probably will, I worry that Prof. Turley’s head will explode.
Ethics Alarms 
When I saw the headline of this post, I wondered, “Which of the three or four a day blunders Joe has been delivering lately is Jack going to discuss?” Biden’s mispronouncing/butchering the new British Prime Minister’s name? His calling Harris a good president? His saying the economy is strong as hell? His wandering stiffly around stages asking where he’s supposed to go? Ron Klain seems to have decided to just let Joe loose. I’m not sure why. Maybe they are building a 25th Amendment case. They’ve surely kept Harris underground recently. She’s invisible, probably to burnish her reputation. (Sorry, I couldn’t help saying that.)
Talk about violating democratic norms…
Bingo. I try not to think about it—the hypocrisy is off the charts.
When Turley was talking about the unconstitutional tactics intentionally being used by the Biden administration he wrote, “The tuition forgiveness program is based on the same cynical tactic.” To which I commented in part…
I expanded my comment with…
There is something seriously wrong with where the overall mentality of the Democratic Party has gone. I think propaganda has completely destroyed their party and it will take many, many years for it to come back around to recognizing actual reality, if that is even possible.
I don’t think we are going to have a Republican controlled anything. There will be too many midnight surprises and the dead vote is always behind the Democrats.
The seeming panic is just theatricality to make it seem like we aren’t in permanent Democrat control obtained by any means necessary.
I’d love for Nov. 9th to prove me wrong. I’ll gladly say that my prognostication is faulty. Please let me be wrong!
You’ll be wrong. And the hysteria from the Axis of Unethical Conduct will be frightening, hilarious, embarrassing, revealing and glorious.
Sarah could very well be right. Maybe the mail in and harvested ballot and drop box plan will work again. We’re still in the midst of a pandemic after all.
They actually cannot impeach Pelosi (or Shumer), since they are not in the executive or judicial branches. The House can, however, vote to expel members (I forget offhand if that requires a 2/3 vote), but I would hope they wouldn’t try such a thing.
At some point both parties need to stop breaching democratic and legislative norms. Kimberly Strassel of the WSJ is fond of saying essentially ‘if only Congress would do its damn job’ — they used to somewhat do that. Now they hardly even try. When is the last time the whole budget went through regular order, debate, conference committees? It’s been a few decades.
Diego Garcia wrote, “They actually cannot impeach Pelosi (or Shumer), since they are not in the executive or judicial branches. The House can, however, vote to expel members (I forget offhand if that requires a 2/3 vote)”
I’m wrong on Pelosi and you’re correct, members of Congress are by definition not “Civil Officers”, I failed to look that part up.
Diego Garcia wrote, “I would hope they wouldn’t try such a thing.”, “At some point both parties need to stop breaching democratic and legislative norms.”
Expelling Pelosi would not be breaching democratic and legislative norms it would be “preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States” as they swore to do. It’s Pelosi that breached democratic and legislative norms and intentionally undermine the Constitution she swore to defend by intentionally violating Donald Trump’s civil rights by intentionally denying President Trump his Constitutional right of due process in her January 6th witch hunt committee. Furthermore, Pelosi conducted two (2) unconstitutional impeachments against President Trump.
Donald Trump doesn’t lose his Constitutional rights just because they hate him.
From the Catholic moral theological perspective. Mortal sin ( def. that sin which separates you from God and the community) requires knowledge that the act is wrong, your knowledge of its wrongness, and you intentionally and willfully doing the act that is wrong. Moral theology does, indeed, seep into politics if we only had eyes that see.