[Peace-discuss] it's pronounced DOO-cheh

[E. Wayne Johnson]

Il Duce.

Naomi Wolf quite correctly pointed out that one of the main reasons
that Cheney and Co. were not impeached for usurpation is that the 
incoming Dems wanted
to retain and wield that new power when they had the sceptre of 
authority. (sceptre...spectre... interesting)


Taking Executive Orders Too Far
by Ron Paul
November 07, 2011

These are frustrating times for the President. Having been swept into 
office with a seemingly strong mandate, he enjoyed a Congress controlled 
by members of his own party for the first two years of his term. 
However, midterm elections brought gridlock and a close division of 
power between the two parties. With a crucial re-election campaign 
coming up, there is desperation in the president’s desire to "do 
something" in spite of his severely weakened mandate.

Getting something done is proving to be a monumental task. This may be 
news to the supposed constitutional scholar who is now our president, 
but if the political process seems inconvenient to the implementation of 
his agenda, that is not a flaw in the system. It was designed that way. 
The drafters of the Constitution intended the default action of 
government to be inaction. Hopefully, this means actions taken by the 
government are necessary and proper. If federal laws or executive 
actions can’t be agreed upon constitutionally- which is to say legally- 
such laws or actions should be rejected.

The vision of the founders was to set up a government that would remain 
small and unobtrusive via a system of checks and balances. That it has 
taken our government so long to get this big speaks well of the original 
design. The founders also knew the overwhelming nature of governments 
was to amass power and grow. The Constitution was to serve as the brakes 
on the freight train of government.

But the Obama administration, like so many administrations in the 20th 
century, chooses to ignore the Constitution entirely. The increasingly 
broad use and scope of the Executive Orders is a prime example. 
Executive Orders are meant to be a way for the president to direct 
executive agencies on the implementation of congressionally approved 
legislation. It has become increasingly common for them to be misused in 
ways that are contradictory to congressional intent, or to bypass 
Congress altogether in enacting political agendas. The current 
administration has unabashedly stated that Congress's unwillingness to 
pass the president's jobs bill means that the president will act 
unilaterally to enact provisions of it piecemeal through Executive 
Order. Obama explicitly threatens to bypass Congress, thus aggregating 
the power to make and enforce laws in the executive. This clearly erodes 
the principles of separation of powers and checks and balances. It 
brings the modern presidency dangerously close to an elective dictatorship.

Of course, the most dangerous and costly overstepping of executive 
authority is going to war without a congressional declaration. Congress 
has been sadly complicit in this usurpation by ceding much of its 
war-making authority to the executive because it wants to avoid taking 
responsibility for major war decisions, but that is part of our job in 
Congress! If the President cannot present to Congress and the people a 
convincingly strong case for going to war, then perhaps we should keep 
the nation at peace, rather than risk our men and women's lives for 
ill-defined reasons!

This administration certainly was not the first to behave in ways that 
have defied the Constitution to overstep its bounds. Sadly, previous 
administrations have set precedents that the current administration is 
only building upon. It is time for Congress to reassert itself and its 
constitutional role so that future administrations cannot continue on 
this dangerous path.