Page 236 - Lbj News Today

Flexing his executive action muscles and hes saying, look, there are things that i can do as president of the united states that i dont need congress for. hes got a list. hes going down it and hes checking it twice as we say at this time of year and its no secret to anybody, michaela, that this is a president who is frustrated during the last election. he had to stay largely out of in the those red states. he was trying to protect a lot of democrats by not causing controversy. now i think he fee...

Play out in the republican party boxing republicans in on certain positi positions as they head into 2016. >> and if theres a backlash against the democrats it will come out against somebody like hillary clinton. gloria borger, douglas brinkley, thanks so much. >> i was thinking if only there was a presidential historian that could write the book of the last six weeks, oh, theres one. >> i might do it. im intrigued. >> wed read it. thanks so much. certainly there will be a lot of key and press...

E manse waited slaved with an executive order and theodore roosevelt created the grand canyon, national park when the senate didnt want to deal with it or john f. kennedy did the peace corps. youre seeing hes getting traction. in the last two years, particularly in foreign policy, theres great openings for barack obama and i know climate change where a lot of politicians feel its not that important, the president thinks its the defining issue of our time. hes invoked in the both his inaugurals a...

Who would not vote for what the president wants, lifting sanctions. i think youd have to say that the odds are against lifting sanctions. will they allow an ambassador to be confirmed to go to havana? thats -- that story remains to be seen. so i think while the president is doing all of this as he said he would, i think it still has to play out in congress to a certain degree. >> gets to the issue of can he keep it up. this is what hes been doing for six weeks now. will the president be so activ...

There precedent for this? has any administration ever just laid out a series of things like this without congress? >> well, you know, i think gloria is right. theres a bit of a superman act going on here. meaning "im freed from congress, im going to be the mr. executive." ive never seen anything like it with the number of executive orders and the audacity that the president is showing. some could write a book just about the last six weeks of 2014 and do very well. now, there have always been cro...

Outside of killing of osama bin laden in foreign policy is the normalization can of relations with cuba and will he go there in 2015? this will be a fascinating press conference today. >> a lot of people are interested to hear what he these say. i recall in this year -- hard to believe the year is already over, gloria -- the president said this was going to be his year of action. >> here we are. >> the white house will say look, hes on a mission to get things done. on the other side of the aisle...

As you can imagine, the white house accepted the invitation. >> right now, the president is getting ready to hold his final news conference of the year before he and his family leave for their christmas vacation. we will, of course, bring those comments to you live next hour right here on cnn. lets talk about some of these resent moves. we have with us today presidential historian douglas brinkley and chief political analyst gloria borger at this hour on friday before many people are taking off ...

Shes right. do you think she is going to have a case? >> it is imminently political and appropriate. she is the secretary of state in charge of elections. it is a political post. shes absolutely going to enforce the law, and i respect her and applaud her for doing so. heres the thing. shes up for election in 2015. shes going play this out next year, but the implication for rand paul may be completely for not because she may not choose to run for re-election or run for election, but if she does, ...

When the states fail. >> eric holder, is he the black president you were waiting for? >> i dont think hes -- we are learning that the nature of racism is very different from what it was in lbjs time in a certain kind of way. racism is, if you try the 1960s era of racism, its like the donald sterling moment. racism is much more embedded and structural and in a way, what we need is a government to enact structural changes. let me come back to you for a second. >> if we think about the white presid...

Too and mention the idea of the parties finding ways to bring the parties more together in washington. i feel one of the problems is that the parties have sort of for lack of a better term, each sorted themselves out. it used to be that you would have in the same democratic party, you had conservative southerners and liberal northerners and in the republican party, very conservative midwesterners and it allowed for cooperation across party lines because there was so much sort of like idealogical...