I know about it because two can keep a secret if one of them are dead.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/obama-w...menei-about-fighting-islamic-state-1415295291
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/14/us-iran-nuclear-usa-idUSKBN0LI01220150214
Shush()*...it's a secret.
No matter how you try and spin it, it's a horrible deal that doesn't prevent Iran from acquiring nukes.
That's why the Leader of the Free World travelled half way around the world to deliver his Churchillian speech to Congress and now the Senate is openly embarrassing and mocking the Kenyan imbecile with this letter.
Senate Letter:
March 9, 2015
An Open Letter to the Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran:
It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system. Thus, we are writing to bring to your attention two features of our Constitution-the power to make binding international agreements and the different character of federal offices-which you should seriously consider as negotiations progress.
First, under our Constitution, while the president negotiates international agreements, Congress plays the significant role of ratifying them.
In the case of a treaty, the Senate must ratify it by a two-thirds vote. A so-called congressional executive agreement requires a majority vote in both the House and the Senate (which, because of procedural rules, effectively means a three-fifths vote in the Senate). Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement.
Second, the offices of our Constitution have different characteristics. For example,the president may serve only two 4-year terms, whereas senators may serve an unlimited number of 6-year terms. As applied today, for instance, President Obama will leave office in January 2017, while most of us will remain in office well beyond then-perhaps decades.
What these two constitutional provisions mean is that we will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei. The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.
We hope this letter enriches your knowledge of our constitutional system and promotes mutual understanding and clarity as nuclear negotiations progress.
Sincerely,
Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.) [and 46 Senate Republicans ]
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Obama to 2008 Republicans: I WON!
2015 Republicans to Obama: WE WON!
:bigfinger
An Open Letter to the Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran:
It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system. Thus, we are writing to bring to your attention two features of our Constitution-the power to make binding international agreements and the different character of federal offices-which you should seriously consider as negotiations progress.
First, under our Constitution, while the president negotiates international agreements, Congress plays the significant role of ratifying them.
In the case of a treaty, the Senate must ratify it by a two-thirds vote. A so-called congressional executive agreement requires a majority vote in both the House and the Senate (which, because of procedural rules, effectively means a three-fifths vote in the Senate). Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement.
Second, the offices of our Constitution have different characteristics. For example,the president may serve only two 4-year terms, whereas senators may serve an unlimited number of 6-year terms. As applied today, for instance, President Obama will leave office in January 2017, while most of us will remain in office well beyond then-perhaps decades.
What these two constitutional provisions mean is that we will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei. The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.
We hope this letter enriches your knowledge of our constitutional system and promotes mutual understanding and clarity as nuclear negotiations progress.
Sincerely,
Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.) [and 46 Senate Republicans ]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Obama to 2008 Republicans: I WON!
2015 Republicans to Obama: WE WON!
:bigfinger
You're the one spinning. I never said I thought this was a good deal. Never, not once. I said I didn't think the GOP Letter was productive. I know in your mind you're either 100% with Obama or 100% with the Obama-Hate crowd, but in reality most aren't. I can not like the deal, think that Congress should have input and still disagree with the 47 GOPer's signing that letter. I know that is baffling for you, but it's possible.
k:
[h=1]Kerry: Congress doesn't have right to change deal with Iran, once signed[/h] [h=2]Secretary of state responds with 'utter disbelief' to Republican senators' open letter to Iran, warning nuclear agreement would only last as long as Obama's term.[/h] By Reuters | Mar. 11, 2015 | 8:00 PM |
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday they would not be able to modify any nuclear agreement struck between the United States and Iran despite threats by Republican senators.
In congressional testimony, Kerry said he responded with "utter disbelief" to an open letter signed by 47 Republican senators that warned that any nuclear agreement would only last as long as U.S. President Barack Obama remains in office.
"When it says that Congress could actually modify the terms of an agreement at any time is flat wrong. You don't have the right to modify an agreement reached executive to executive between leaders of a country," Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which does not include Senator Tom Cotton, the Republican from Arkansas who wrote the letter.
The White House slammed the letter as "reckless" and "irresponsible," warning that it interfered with efforts to negotiate with the Iranians.
The negotiations, which resume in Lausanne, Switzerland, next week led by Kerry, are at a critical juncture as the sides try to meet an end of March target for an interim deal, with a final deal in June that would ease crippling sanctions against Iran's economy.
The letter was an unusual intervention by lawmakers into U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. Constitution divides foreign policy between the president and Congress.
"During my 29 years in the Senate I never heard of, or even heard of it being proposed, anything comparable to this," Kerry said. "This letter ignores more than two centuries of precedent in the conduct of American foreign policy."
Kerry said the letter undermined and added uncertainty to the "thousands of agreements" the United States signs with foreign governments across the globe.
| |
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday they would not be able to modify any nuclear agreement struck between the United States and Iran despite threats by Republican senators.
In congressional testimony, Kerry said he responded with "utter disbelief" to an open letter signed by 47 Republican senators that warned that any nuclear agreement would only last as long as U.S. President Barack Obama remains in office.
"When it says that Congress could actually modify the terms of an agreement at any time is flat wrong. You don't have the right to modify an agreement reached executive to executive between leaders of a country," Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which does not include Senator Tom Cotton, the Republican from Arkansas who wrote the letter.
The White House slammed the letter as "reckless" and "irresponsible," warning that it interfered with efforts to negotiate with the Iranians.
The negotiations, which resume in Lausanne, Switzerland, next week led by Kerry, are at a critical juncture as the sides try to meet an end of March target for an interim deal, with a final deal in June that would ease crippling sanctions against Iran's economy.
The letter was an unusual intervention by lawmakers into U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. Constitution divides foreign policy between the president and Congress.
"During my 29 years in the Senate I never heard of, or even heard of it being proposed, anything comparable to this," Kerry said. "This letter ignores more than two centuries of precedent in the conduct of American foreign policy."
Kerry said the letter undermined and added uncertainty to the "thousands of agreements" the United States signs with foreign governments across the globe.
Kerry: Iran deal 'not legally binding'
Tom Cotton @SenTomCotton · 12h12 hours ago
Important question: if deal with Iran isn't legally binding, then what's to keep Iran from breaking said deal and developing a bomb?
azzkick(&^
Tom Cotton @SenTomCotton · 12h12 hours agoImportant question: if deal with Iran isn't legally binding, then what's to keep Iran from breaking said deal and developing a bomb?
azzkick(&^
Kerry: Iran deal 'not legally binding'
Important question: if deal with Iran isn't legally binding, then what's to keep Iran from breaking said deal and developing a bomb?
azzkick(&^
You are as much a simpleton as Cotton. Iran already dismissed Cotton's charade, and rightfully laughed at him and the letter(and sadly at the US for having idiots in the Country who would be so treasonous)Assuming we get an agreement, Iran breaks it at their own peril. If you are truly interested in the topic of Executive agreements vs Treaties, what Kerry meant by "legally binding", and are capable of reading it without going on the usual anti Obama nonsense, here it is.
Treaties vs. Executive Agreements: When Does Congress Get a Vote?
ByDamian Paletta
The ability to make treaties, agreements, or even nonbinding handshakes with foreign leaders has long rested with the White House — sometimes, but not always, with the consent of the Senate. But exactly what type of deal they cut is often dictated by political realities in Washington. And presidents stretching back to George Washington himself have grumbled about Senate obstruction in the process.
There are two basic types of international agreements that the White House could pursue in its nuclear talks with Iran.
Treaties, which require approval by the U.S. Senate, used to be more common, but now are a relatively rare occurrence. Presidents of both parties have instead opted to enter into so-called executive agreements, which for the most part don’t require congressional authorization.
Treaties are binding. In fact, the U.S. government still has more than a dozen treaties on the books with Iran, having brokered various agreements on agricultural commodities, aviation, and even military matters dating back to the 1950s.
But treaties are also trickier to come by, because they need Senate approval. That is one reason why presidents in recent decades have opted for executive agreements, which typically don’t require congressional input. But they carry a major drawback: they can be reversed by the next president.
A 2009 study published by the University of Michigan found that 52.9% of international agreements were executive agreements from 1839 until 1889, but from 1939 until 1989 the ratio had risen to 94.3%.
The founding fathers designed the international agreement system with a lot of flexibility, or, depending on your perspective, ambiguity, because even they couldn’t agree on which branch of government should have the dominant say in how the U.S. reached deals with foreign governments.
In recent decades, presidents have entered into thousands of executive agreements with foreign governments, on a range of issues, both controversial and relatively basic.
“Diplomacy is a lot more complicated now than it was in 1789,” said Michael Ramsey, a professor at the University of San Diego Law School.”The president has a lot more things now that he has to just get done on a daily basis than he used to. If all those agreements had to be brought back to the Senate to be approved, there’s no way it would be done.”
Executive agreements have their weaknesses, however, and make for easy political targets.
First of all, they can lead to immense squawking from members of Congress, which is what happened when the Clinton administration cut a deal with North Korea over its nuclear program in 1994.
A number of GOP lawmakers, including Sen. John McCain of Arizona, went ballistic, saying a deal of that magnitude should have been brought before Congress. The agreement was never ultimately implemented, in part because of how little political support there was for it back in the U.S.
Robert Einhorn, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the Obama administration could structure the deal it is negotiating with several foreign countries and Iran as an “executive agreement” to bypass the Senate, but ultimately Congress would get its say. That is because the White House is trying to lure Iran into a deal by suggesting that long-standing sanctions would be rolled back. The White House has the power to temporarily suspend sanctions, but not eliminate them. Only Congress could do that.
“The agreement will provide for the eventual removal of sanctions, and that can only be done by the Congress,” Mr. Einhorn said. “So the Congress will get a vote, but it will be down the road.”
If the Iran talks were structured like a treaty now, the White House could try and push for a formal agreement with Congress over a way to phase out the sanctions. But the White House isn’t pushing for such a treaty, in part because senior officials know it would never pass.
Congress approved more than 1,500 treaties in the first 200 years of the U.S. government’s existence, a number so large that some White House officials might be tempted to test their luck with the Iran talks.
But the White House has made clear it will instead seek an executive agreement, or something like it. This approach will draw heat from Congress, and legal experts will watch the proceedings closely to see the constitutional implications.
“One way to spin this is: ‘Presidents do this all the time, there are thousands of executive agreements out there. Why is Congress worked up about this one?’” Mr. Ramsey said. “But the answer is, typically, the executive agreements you see are routine, low-level, ‘how-to-get-along’ things, whereas this agreement is a pretty big deal.”
He added the GOP’s case rests on choices, not requirements: “Their argument isn’t that the president can’t make executive agreements. But, rather, that the president can’t make an executive agreement on an issue of this importance.”
Kerry has to able to justify his paycheck somehow.
What a great gig being SOS must be. You get to travel around the world on the tax payers dime, wheel and deal on imaginary deals that aren’t legally binding with countries who wouldn’t abide by the deal even if it were legal.
Then you get to pump your chest and proclaim you’ve actually accomplished something. Sweet!
They should have continued working towards a veto-proof bipartisan majority. Why don't you read what Bob Corker had to say or what Jeff Flake had to say. This letter was beyond stupid.
I know you'll casually dismiss the following quote but it's 100% true....
“Before the letter, the national conversation was about Netanyahu’s speech and how Obama’s negotiations with Iran are leading to a terrible deal that could ultimately harm U.S. national security. Now, the Obama administration and its Capitol Hill partisans are cynically trying to push the conversation away from policy, and towards a deeply political pie fight over presidential and congressional prerogatives,” said a Senate Republican aide whose boss signed the letter.
This shit deal is similar to the one Clinton and Madeline Halfbright cut with North Korea. They even hired the same damn negotiator.
Guess what? It didn't work - North Korea got nukes.
This Act of Surrender against a terrorist state which calls the United States "the Great Satan" is TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE and puts the civilized world on a warpath with Iran.
Sabotage is the only viable GOP strategy.
Guess what? It didn't work - North Korea got nukes.
This Act of Surrender against a terrorist state which calls the United States "the Great Satan" is TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE and puts the civilized world on a warpath with Iran.
Sabotage is the only viable GOP strategy.
