Sue? Impeach?

What a juicy topic, what an astonishing topic. The GOP is playing with fire, first a small burning stick; after that, perhaps, a three-alarm conflagration. Boehner is moving closer to suing President Obama for … hold on to your whatever-the-fuck-you-hold-onto-in-moments-of-lunacy … excessive use of presidential Executive Orders. And, if this childish gambit should perhaps gain purchase with Congress, the Republicans will move on to the big one: Impeach the usurper.

A quick look at the ways in which modern presidents have used the power of their office to push issues using Executive Orders reveals some interesting facts and numbers. Here are the data, the average number of Executive Orders issued in each term by each of the last eleven presidents going back to Eisenhower:

Ike:           61

JFK:          75

LBJ:          63

Nixon:       62

Ford:         61

Carter:      80

Reagan:    48

Bush I:     42

Clinton:    46

Bush II:   37

Obama:   33

So Boehner is suing Obama for using the legitimate power of the presidency at a rate that is less than any president since WW II. And, in case you think I’m cherry-picking data here, here are the numbers from earlier days: T. Roosevelt - 145, Taft - 181, Wilson - 225, Harding - 216 , Coolidge - 215, Hoover - 245, FDR - 291, Truman - 117.

So, he’s suing Obama for using Executive Orders less frequently than any president in the last century. In fact, you have to go back to Grover Cleveland to find a president more reluctant to use this constitutional presidential power.

But here’s the really weird, off the end of the pier, angle. Since Boehner can’t just say “he’s using his constitutionally guaranteed prerogatives,” he has to identify one or more specific instances of presidential over-reach. So what does he pick? The claim that Obama has displayed his dictatorial, “kingly” side by ordering the delay of one of the features of Obamacare.

It is really difficult to get one’s mind around this — particularly if you’re the possessor of a mind that still functions. The GOP has voted over fifty times to repeal the Affordable Care Act. When these quixotic efforts went nowhere (as they had to), they turned to insisting that the clause mandating that all companies provide health care for all its employees be revoked or, failing that, at least delayed.

And, astonishingly, Obama did just that. He used an Executive Order to suspend temporarily the requirement that all companies fulfill the letter of the law here, giving them the additional time needed to process the complex paperwork.

So Boehner and the lunatics who have infiltrated what was once a genuinely “Grand” Old Party are suing Obama for doing what they said they wanted him to do….

That muffled explosion you just heard was my brain exploding.