House Speaker John Boehner, the country’s most powerful Republican, says he’s going to sue President Barack Obama on behalf of the Congress for alleged misuse of executive orders.
Is Boehner's threat more of the same partisan Washington theater or a real constitutional crisis?
"The House leadership is scrambling so hard to try to reassert some kind of actual leadership, that it’s I think awfully hard for most Americans to see really this in serious way as the Congress trying to defend its authority," says political science professor Phillip J. Cooper of Portland State University, and author of “By Order of the President -- Use and Abuse of Presidential Direct Action.”
Cooper points out that Speaker Boehner doesn’t have the authority to sue on behalf of Congress without a vote authorizing him to. These facts make it more likely that the would-be constitutional crisis will likely be reduced to a congressional kerfuffle.
But there are important questions at play here. On this week's
