The US Constitution is like the Bible, not in that it provides a set of rules and laws by which to govern lives and nations, but because Oklahoma lawmakers claim to be huge fans of each, yet apparently have never taken the time to read them.
Last week in an attempt to flaunt their constitutional rights to openly be ass-hats, the Oklahoma House of Representatives passed House Bill 1236.
Conveniently introduced the week before a Democrat took the presidency, it would allow our state lawmakers to determine whether a presidential executive order is constitutional or not based on a simple majority vote. For those of you who are also about a decade removed from your last political science course, an executive order is a directive given by the President of the United States that has the force of federal law and is a power granted to the executive branch (aka the president) by Article II of the US Constitution.
So basically, the bill would allow Oklahoma lawmakers to decide if a presidential executive order is constitutional. You know, the same lawmakers who try to pass unconstitutional anti-abortion bills and Big Foot hunting season regulations. That makes as much sense as an Oklahoma lawmaker trying to recite more than three Bible verses from memory. Especially when you take the Supremacy Clause into consideration.
No, "God helps those who help themselves" is nowhere in the Bible.
The Supremacy Clause, which is outlined under Article VI of the same US Constitution, posits that in all cases federal regulations trump state law when they counter each other. So even if our esteemed lawmakers were able to give themselves the power to declare an executive order was “unconstitutional,” according to their beloved constitution they’d have to follow the federal order anyway.
Passing this into law and allowing our esteemed lawmakers to challenge executive orders would likely do nothing but involve Oklahoma in a series of unnecessary lawsuits and give us more batshittery to write about. This bill does nothing but distract constituents, media, and obscure local social bloggers from the fact that our representative leaders care more about political party pandering and spectacle than they care about actually leading this state. So in some ways, Oklahoma lawmakers are like their own bills: useless and impossible to take seriously.
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