Obama Moves to Bypass Senate on Treaties

As bad as his domestic agenda is, it's his international agenda which worries me most.

With the clock running out on a new US-Russian arms treaty before the previous Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, expires on December 5, a senior White House official said Sunday said that the difficulty of the task might mean temporarily bypassing the Senate’s constitutional role in ratifying treaties by enforcing certain aspects of a new deal on an executive levels and a “provisional basis” until the Senate ratifies the treaty.

Just what we needed: another unitary executive who wants to centralize power in himself.

Hat tip to Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, who adds: "After listening to the Democrats screech for the last two years about the rule of law, this Jake Tapper report should be surprising …. but it’s not. Apparently, Barack Obama finds treaty ratification a little too complicated, and so he figures he can just commit the US to nuclear disarmament and bypass Congressional oversight".

Of course, the reason why the Senate was given the power of ratification was to preserve the ability of the states to defend their individual sovereignty. Repealing the 17th Amendment is the only way to fight power grabs by the executive branch.