Republicans Extinguish Right-Wing’s Calls To Impeach Obama

By Rebecca Leber/Think Progress

Republicans have characterized Obama’s executive actions preventing gun violence as“a power grab,”, pledged to introduce legislation nullifying his orders, and even floatedimpeaching the President for allegedly overstepping his Constitutional powers.

On Wednesday night, former Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey offered a reality check for alarmed conservatives. Appearing on Fox News’ Hannity, Mukasey clarified that no court would find Obama’s gun violence prevention initiatives unconstitutional:

MUKASEY: I don’t think it’s unconstitutional in the sense that I don’t think it’s something you could get a court to find unconstitutional. We could have a debate about whether it’s consistent with the constitution or not, but there is a limited number of things that will get you into court to have that decided, and I don’t think any of the things you’ve enumerated are among them.

Reagan’s solicitor general Charles Fried also poured cold water on GOP comparisons of Obama to dictators and tyrants, noting many of the provisions are calls to action or carry out existing law: “These are either standard exercises of presidential power, or even more benignly, standard examples of the power of the president to exhort the public or state officials to be aware of certain problems and to address them,” he said.

U.S. Chamber Hires Bush’s Attorney General To Help Weaken Ban On Corporate Bribery

By Alex Seitz-Wald

As ThinkProgress reported in October, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is pushing to overhaulthe Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), the government’s main enforcement mechanism to stop American-based multinational firms from bribing foreign governments in order to win special business advantages. The Chamber thinks the law is too burdensome for American businesses and makes them less competitive compared to foreign companies, which are freer to engage in corruption.

The Blog of Legal Times reports the Chamber has now enlisted a powerful ally to fight the scourge of anti-corruption — President Bush’s Attorney General Michael Mukasey:

Debevoise & Plimpton, where Mukasey is a partner, filed lobbying registration papers on his behalf this month, according to Senate records. The registration is for the Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform and is effective back to March 3. It covers possible FCPA amendments and other issues “related to criminal law and policies affecting U.S. corporations.” [...]

Harold Kim, senior vice president at the Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform, said he’s pleased with Mukasey’s hiring. “He brings a wealth of experience on these matters given his past positions as attorney general of the United States as well as chief judge of the Southern District of New York,” Kim said in an interview. “I think he’ll be a good advocate as part of our overall efforts to secure some more clarity and certainty with respect to the current statute.”

The Chamber may have decided to take on the FCPA now because President Obama’s Department of Justice has decided to do what Bush’s Department of Justice under Mukasey didn’t — thoroughly enforce the law. Under Obama, the department collectedmore than $1 billion in fines during fiscal year 2010, the most the government has collected in the law’s 38-year history, and more than ten times the $87 million collected in 2007 by the Bush Administration.

Did Giuliani And Co. Provide ‘Material Support’ To Terrorist Group?

By Matt Duss

The Washington Post reports that four prominent Republicans — former New York mayor Rudy Guiliani, former Bush administration homeland security adviser Fran Townsend, former homeland security secretary Tom Ridge, and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey — spoke before “a forum of cheering Iranian exiles” in Paris to demand that President Obama “take the controversial Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK) opposition group off the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations and incorporate it into efforts to overturn the mullah-led government in Tehran”:

“Appeasement of dictators leads to war, destruction and the loss of human lives,” Giuliani declared. “For your organization to be described as a terrorist organization is just really a disgrace.”

The four GOP figures appeared at a rally organized by the French Committee for a Democratic Iran, a pressure group formed to support MEK.

Leaving aside the spectacle of prominent conservatives going abroad to criticize the administration’s foreign policy, there’s actually a real question here of whether Giuliani, Townsend, Ridge, and Mukasey have violated U.S. law in regard to “material support” for terrorism.

In June, the Supreme Court ruled in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project that “the First Amendment does not protect humanitarian groups or others who advise foreign terrorist organizations, even if the support is aimed at legal activities or peaceful settlement of dispute”:

In a case that weighed free speech against national security, the court voted 6 to 3 to uphold a federal law banning “material support” to foreign terrorist organizations. That ban holds, the court said, even when the offerings are not money or weapons but things such as “expert advice or assistance” or “training” intended to instruct in international law or appeals to the United Nations.