Obama pulls out veto pen, reminds anti-refugee cowards that he’s still the President [View all]

[KamaAina]

http://www.dailynewsbin.com/opinion/obama-pulls-out-veto-pen-reminds-anti-refugee-republicans-that-hes-the-president/23070/

Even as nearly all republicans in the House and even a few democrats prepare to pass legislation which would deny entry to Syrian refugees and send them to their imminent death at the hands of ISIS, Barack Obama is having none of their racist cowardice. He’s calling them out for fanning the flames of anti-Muslim paranoia, and he’s also reminding them that he’s still the President – by pulling out his veto pen.

Obama says that if such legislation does reach his desk, he’ll veto it. The republicans would almost certainly be unable to cobble together enough votes in the Senate for an override, meaning that their efforts are dead in the water; the Syrian refugees will be allowed in. Furthermore, the republican governors who are refusing to allow refugees to enter their state are also going nowhere, as the Refugee Act of 1980 spells out that the President has final say over admittance of refugees. So what exactly are these republican leaders trying to accomplish, if they know they have no chance of interfering with the President’s common sense approach to refugees?

The answer seems clear enough: they’re simply trying to make their already paranoid and racist-leaning republican followers even more paranoid and racist by convincing them that these harmless and thoroughly vetted Syrian refugees are somehow coming here to harm them. But while that may work in an ideological sense, it won’t matter in a legal sense. Obama is still the President, and unlike the cowardice the republicans are showing toward the refugees, he’s showing no such cowardice toward the republicans.