Will someone with a back-bone give Obama a swift kick in the backside so that this President grows a pair of BALLS. He's an affront to thinking people. Does he know who Neville Chamberlain was? I will not vote for a GOP candidate,bute at this time I WILL NOT vote for this President again.

Any election results would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.

wait...no abby wambach? *sigh*

but yay for the rest of the team!

It's News Corp. The "p" isn't silent. Rachel is pronouncing it News Core, as in Marine Corps.

It's News Corp. The "p" isn't silent. Rachel is pronouncing it News Core, as in Marine Corps.

Thank you for the opening segment with Prof Balkin. An informative lead-in and interesting dialog with him that showed the Prof to be spot-on regarding the inconvenience of the political position the President has put him self in but, unfortunately, Prof Balkin is flat out wrong on the law. As he said, there are 2 laws that through policy enacted with those laws serving as establishment are now coming into conflict - being spending authorizations and the "debt ceiling". We must remember that these 2 laws cited by Balkin must themselves rest on Constitutional prerogatives and principles. Laws detailing taxation and expenditure policy benefit from robust, unambiguous Constitutional language found both in the body and the Amendments. The debt ceiling law, conversely, does not. In fact, the debt ceiling "law", in practical application, is in direct conflict with the plain language of the 14th Amendment. It's is a sad fact, devoid of irony, that the debt ceiling law was passed decades after the 14th was adopted.

The crux of the matter is easy to define and simple to identify. As you made point to Prof Balkin, Rachel, the key phrase in paragraph 4 is that debt "shall not be questioned". if I'm not mistaken, you yourself have reported that the nation's credit rating agencies have already issued reports that "question" the ability/willingness of the Federal government to meet its obligations. Not only that, major creditors, the sovereign bank of the PRC being but one, have publicly questioned the wisdom of the debt ceiling politics by explicitly questioning the will of Congress and the government on whole to meet its obligations. If this and other debt holders are making public pronouncements, raising questions and concerns regarding default, then it is safe to assume that these creditors have had private conversations expressing a similar if not exactly the same point to key stakeholders in the Executive branch as well as Legislative branch.

How many more questions from how many more sources need be raised before the status of the nation's debt and our ability to satisfy those obligations are considered, officially, to be questioned when the Constitution explicitly and unambiguously declares that debt obligations "shall not be questioned"?

I can certainly appreciate Prof Balkin's perspective, but his chosen route to endorse "last minute" wobbliness regarding Constitutional imperatives neglect black letter law for the invisible ink of political gamesmanship - to the detriment of the law, the nation, the Presidency, the economy and - most importantly - the citizenry.

Toward bolstering my analysis, I refer you to the deeply dissatisfactory politics of the Libya excursion. The President's decision to unilaterally exert power in this military action, an all too common euphemism for war, has no clear foundation in law or Constitutional prerogative. Neither of those conditions fettered the President from acting as he and his advisors saw fit - though the fitness of their "seeing" has (un?)expectedly turned out to be so functionally fuzzy as to be blind. That the politics of war making are, in our era, at a notable remove from Articles I and II of the Constitution that this gap is merely a footnote in most contemporary debates about military force's political authorization. Even the War Powers act is no guarantee that a President will consult with the bodies that the Founders definitively and exclusive granted war-making powers.

it is in the juxtaposition of the President's nonchalance in acting in his own self-defined, self-identified self-interest regarding Libya, the Constitution and a decades old law regarding the extra-Congressional use of military force with his "restraint" regarding Constitutional imperatives designed to shield the nation's hard won economic vitality from wanton, political, faction-driven ruin that specific doubts about the President's intentions arise and, in the larger context, his fitnesses and worthiness to earn the renomination of his Party to seek the Office of the President for a second term.

I'm sure that Justice Ginsberg would revel engaging spirited cloak-room debates over the 14th Amendment's pertinence and necessity - as her last great act before hanging up her robes for a final time. Let's hope the President realizes the wisdom and sturdiness of trusting in the Constitution and in the Justices whose duty it is to put law, legitimacy and national stability before ideology and partisan gain at the risk of national ruin.

The near instantaneous destruction of the "full faith and credit of the United States of America" merits more than clique-ish electioneering, professorial politicking and death-bed Constitutionalism as a defense. Undoing 200 years of perfect credit history cannot be left to "gangs of 6" or the like. I think I'll give Hamilton's reports on the Public Credit and on Manufactures another going over in hours before your Wednesday show. If I had the means and access, I'd read both reports aloud to the President.

It would be useful for TRMS to have another constitutional law scholar on the show to debate Professor Balkin's position on the President's options regarding the debt ceiling and the 14th Amendment. This is one area where being an expert does not necessarily mean being "correct". I realize that the chosen format of TRMS is not to have several guests on simultaneously for an on-camera debate, but inviting only one law professor to opine on this subject leaves the impression with viewers that it is a settled matter, which is far from the truth.