House Speaker John Boehner announced Thursday the Republican-led lawsuit against President Barack Obama will focus on the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and the White House decision to delay the employer mandate.

“In 2013, the president changed the health care law without a vote of Congress, effectively creating his own law by literally waiving the employer mandate and the penalties for failing to comply with it. That’s not the way our system of government was designed to work,” Boehner said in a statement.

As if President Obama doesn’t have enough on his plate, the former constitutional law professor might spend the last 2½ years of his term in court, battling Republicans over whether he violated the Constitution…

“It’s very unlikely that you could resolve anything of this sort until Obama is gone,” says Norman Ornstein, a congressional and presidential scholar at the American Enterprise Institute…

“I think it is clear that the president has overstepped his authority on a number of occasions,” says Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School. “The president is effectively nullifying federal law.”

Go ahead, President Barack Obama told House Republicans Thursday. Impeach him.

“You hear some of them: ‘Sue him! Impeach him!’” Obama said in a relaxed, sniping campaign-style speech in Austin, Texas, recounting the resistance he’s run into for signing executive actions. “Really? For what, doing my job?”

So punchy that he was leaning arms hanging off the front of his podium, telling a few hecklers to “sit down,” and instructing the Secret Service not to bother removing them, Obama said he was feeling liberated.

“I don’t have to run for office anymore, so I can just let it rip,” he said.

House Speaker John Boehner is rebuffing calls from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for President Obama’s impeachment — preferring instead to pursue a lawsuit against the president over his use of executive powers.

“The path that we’re going is the right one to defend our institution against the encroachment from the Executive Branch and to preserve the Constitution of our country as it was written and as it was intended,” Boehner told reporters.

Pelosi, who noted she dealt with similar calls from Democrats in the later years of George W. Bush’s presidency, said she decided not to bring forward articles of impeachment on Bush because “it wasn’t something I wanted to put the country through.”

The California Democrat said Thursday that Bush had “sent us into war based on a false representation,” something she called “shameful, irresponsible and wrong,” but she said did not want to move forward with impeachment, “because of what it would mean for the American people.”

Pelosi noted that what President Bill Clinton did to bring forward articles of impeachment was “stupid,” but that his marital infidelities had nothing to do with public policy.

Tom Coburn

Who Is He: Republican senator from Oklahoma, and physician.

What He Said: “What you have to do is you have to establish the criteria that would qualify for proceedings against the president, and that’s called impeachment.”… I think there’s some intended violation of the law in this administration, but I also think there’s a ton of incompetence, of people who are making decisions. … I don’t have the legal background to know if that rises to high crimes and misdemeanor, but I think they’re getting perilously close.”

When He Said It: August 21, 2013

Sarah Palin joined the impeachment calls on Tuesday, which could mean that the former Alaska Governor has been feeling neglected. She is following the talk radio hosts and obscure authors who are trying to increase audience share or sell books by posing as Mr. Obama’s loudest opponents.

Mrs. Palin immediately received the media fillip she wanted, especially from MSNBC and the left-wing websites that want to portray the fading GOP star as a conservative leader. Progressives would like nothing better than for Republicans to try to impeach Mr. Obama, so they could scare up otherwise demoralized Democratic voters to come to the polls this November…

If conservatives really want to address those problems, they should elect a Republican Senate majority. A GOP Senate could stop the President’s worst appointees, including judicial nominees. It could use budget reconciliation to pass policy reforms on ObamaCare, energy and other issues that the President would pay a political price for vetoing. And a GOP Senate could add its oversight power to dig into government abuses like the IRS political targeting.

A vote to impeach Obama won’t result in his removal from office, since that requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate. But that doesn’t mean it would be worthless. It would show for the second time in a year that conservatives in Congress will fight for something, so long as it’s something completely unrealistic and unattainable.

Also, not enough people know that conservatives think Obama is a horrible president. So let me say it again: “Obama is a horrible president.” And also, let’s impeach him, because that will get the word out a lot better than just me saying it here…

After Obama easily survives the Senate removal vote and wins broad public sympathy, this fall’s elections will be much more of a fair fight.

I love election nights, and this one will be a lot more exciting if Democrats have a serious shot at winning back a House majority. It’s more fun when there’s more at stake — like the possibility of having Obamacare 2.0 sail through Congress next year with hardly a fight.

The 2014 midterm elections need to be about jobs, the economy and Obamacare. This election should not be about President Obama. Haven’t we been down this road before? In 2012, didn’t we think dissatisfaction with President Obama would turn out Republicans and conservatives and elect Mitt Romney? As unpopular as President Obama is, voters vote with their pocketbooks. We should be talking about the first-quarter GDP contraction and the loss of full-time jobs in June. And as Politico pointed out this week, higher state health insurance rates may be announced shortly before the midterm elections.

So Republicans should be talking about these real problems, which will have an impact on Americans across the country. Pursuing impeachment or even talking too much about it just reinforces the notion of Republicans as hyper-partisans who are obsessed with the president and who don’t want to do anything but hound him.

Via CNS.