Constitutional republics are, like, hard

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Out: Amassing of executive power is bad.

In: Amassing of executive power... not a problem.


After about two years of wondering how it was that the liberal-left of this country was going to justify what they allegedly hated Bush for now that the current President has taken executive orders and signing statements to a competitive sporting level, we now have our answer: America's dead tree outlet of record, the New York Times chimes in with this OpEd feature:

President George W. Bush used his executive power to bypass Congress, almost as a matter of routine. Now President Barack Obama is pulling a similar stunt.

I was appalled, and so was the Times editorial board (and so, in fact was Senator Barack Obama) when a Boston Globe reporter, Charlie Savage, documented Mr. Bush’s use of presidential signing statements and executive orders. But I am not appalled by the way Mr. Obama is relying on those instruments – as detailed in today’s Times by that same enterprising reporter, who now works for us. Context and intent make all the difference.

The author Andrew Rosenthal attempts to bolster his argument later in the article but right out of the gate, his rationale is summed up as: it's OK, because he's our guy.


Rosenthal then starts up the waaaahmbulance and complains that Obama was forced into this position because of an uncooperative Congress.

For nearly three years, President Obama devoted a great deal of effort to finding compromises with Congressional Republicans. That was futile, in my view, since those Republicans had made it clear from the day he was inaugurated in 2009 that their plan was to oppose everything he wanted, and then paint him as a failed president. (Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, said his party’s “number one goal” was to keep the president from winning a second term.)

Mr. Obama got fed up, finally, last fall, according to Mr. Savage’s article, and the result was the “We Can’t Wait” project, which has led to dozens of executive actions on a range of issues, including jobs for veterans and fuel economy standards.

Unlike the Bush/Cheney team, Mr. Obama did not take office with the explicit goal of creating new powers for the presidency. That was not part of his agenda. Moreover, his executive actions often are more modest in their effect than the White House’s public relations team might admit.

Government by executive order is not sustainable in the long-term. Nor is it desirable, whether you agree or disagree with those orders. But in this particular case, there may be no alternative.

Rosenthal is either ignorant of the constitutional concepts of separation of power and checks and balances or he is so desperately grasping at straws, he's forced to produce drivel such as this. Being a water-carrying hack is one thing but to pen this column is embarrassing.

Memo to Mr. Rosenthal: quit whining and quit defending the indefensible. Constitutional republics aren't supposed to be easy. Dictatorships are easy. Passing legislation should be a painful affair and when that piece of legislation doesn't get past the, uh, legislative bodies, it should be considered dead.

That's the way things work in constitutional republics of which we are apparently in the "post-" phase as the sitting President is impatient with things and Rosenthal automatically assumes that all the President's executive orders are inherently productive and benign and therefore acceptable regardless of their mighty constitutional dubiousness. (We would love to hear Rosenthal's justifications for our unauthorized kineticism in Libya as goal-unspecific as it was and especially that for the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without cause and wacking U.S. citizens overseas without traditionally-recognized due process) .


It doesn't matter if this consolidation of executive power would cure cancer or, you know, stop the rising of the seas. That's not the point. When the President starts issuing executive orders with the alacrity that Obama has, it's a sign that things are too hard and that "easy" is the preferred governing M.O. and as we inferred two paragraphs ago "easy" is no good... "easy" sucks and "easy" leads to very bad outcomes.


As incredibly lame as it was, at least, now we have our answer.

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Slouching towards a 4th term

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Let's see... "unilateralism", "going it alone", "rendition", "pre-emption", "shredding the constitution"... weren't all the above which were allegedly part and parcel to Bush's presidency some of the main causes of Bush Derangement Syndrome among liberals and particularly those who were most excited by the Hopenchange as promised by one Barack Hussein Obama?

No, it couldn't have been. It couldn't have been because...

The U.S. government has the right to order the killing of American citizens overseas if they are senior al-Qaeda leaders who pose an imminent terrorist threat and cannot reasonably be captured, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Monday.

“Any decision to use lethal force against a United States citizen — even one intent on murdering Americans and who has become an operational leader of al-Qaeda in a foreign land — is among the gravest that government leaders can face,” Holder said in a speech at Northwestern University’s law school in Chicago. “The American people can be — and deserve to be — assured that actions taken in their defense are consistent with their values and their laws.”


Holder’s discussion of lethal force against U.S. citizens did not mention any individual by name, but his address was clearly animated by the targeting of Anwar al-Awlaki, a senior figure in al-Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate. Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico, was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in September.

Since that operation, the Obama administration has faced calls to explain the legal framework behind its decision to target Awlaki and to release at least portions of a classified memorandum by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel that contains its evidence, reasoning and conclusions.

Holder’s speech represented the administration’s most elaborate public explanation to date for targeted killings. And it followed a prolonged internal debate about how to inform the public about one of the most extraordinary decisions a government can take without explicitly acknowledging the ongoing classified drone program.

Among the most revealing parts of the speech was Holder’s discussion of some of the factors the administration reviews before deciding that an individual represents an “imminent threat.” He said the critical factors include the “relevant window of opportunity to act, the possible harm that missing the window would cause to civilians and the likelihood of heading off future disastrous attacks against the United States.”

He said the president is not required by the Constitution to delay action until some “theoretical end stage of planning — when the precise time, place and manner of an attack become clear.”

(italics, ours)


Holy smokes! It's the ticking time bomb theory as justified to use, ahem, enhanced interrogation techniques that was scorned by Bush-hating liberals.

And let's be perfectly clear about something: The Bush administration considered but never put together a program or "list" if you will of American citizens suspected of terrorist activities that would be targeted for killing let alone actually carrying out a kill job as the Obama administration has done.

The attorney general’s “flexible definition of ‘imminent threat’ is absolutely appropriate as applied to terrorist planners, but it may be unsettling to many in the international community who criticized President Bush for his principle of preemption,” said John B. Bellinger, who served as a legal adviser to the State Department in the George W. Bush administration.

Bellinger said he agreed with the attorney general’s statement of U.S. law for targeting an American, although he noted that the speech was less clear about how targeted killings comply with international legal rules.

We don't recall nearly as charitable treatment of Bush-era counter-terrorism policies from this nation's papers (the Washington Post, in this case)



And here's more from the miserable hack that runs the Justice Department:

Holder argued that a careful and thorough executive branch review of the facts in a case amounts to “due process” and that the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment protection against depriving a citizen of his or her life without due process of law does not mandate a “judicial process.”

“Where national security operations are at stake, due process takes into account the realities of combat,” Holder said. “Some have argued that the president is required to get permission from a federal court before taking action against a United States citizen who is a senior operational leader of al-Qaeda or associated forces. This is simply not accurate.”

Holder said that the question of “whether the capture of a U.S.-citizen terrorist is feasible is a fact-specific, and potentially time-sensitive, question.”

“Given the nature of how terrorists act and where they tend to hide,” he continued, “it may not always be feasible to capture a United States-citizen terrorist who presents an imminent threat of violent attack. In that case, our government has the clear authority to defend the United States with lethal force.”

That is indeed an interesting philosophical shift from a person who wanted to try KSM and other terrorists in our civilian courts.




Years ago, B-Daddy warned us against giving the Executive branch too much of a national security pass when it came to the accruing of and execution of extra-constitutional powers. His fear was that a subsequent president would use the Bush actions as precedent to gather even more power under the Presidency. We don't think even B-Daddy, however, expected such a power grab in the very next presidency be it with respect to health care, Bailout Nation and, of course, the War on Terror.

That any number of Obama supporters and a compliant 4th estate admit to the same thing.





We leave you with a video we ran a couple of months back that is a very nice little Bush-Obama civil liberties side-by-each comparison.



When you lose Noam Chomsky





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Unforeseen (?) consequences

Another day, another… you know the rest.

We’re afraid we may have been overcome by "crappy idea fatigue", but persevere we must.

The Obama administration is considering asking Congress to give the Treasury secretary unprecedented powers to initiate the seizure of non-bank financial companies, such as large insurers, investment firms and hedge funds, whose collapse would damage the broader economy, according to an administration document.

The government at present has the authority to seize only banks.

Giving the Treasury secretary authority over a broader range of companies would mark a significant shift from the existing model of financial regulation, which relies on independent agencies that are shielded from the political process. The Treasury secretary, a member of the president's Cabinet, would exercise the new powers in consultation with the White House, the Federal Reserve and other regulators, according to the document.

(italics, ours)

For all the wailing and gnashing of teeth that was done with respect to the Patriot Act regarding governmental incursion into private matters, how is all this remotely any better? At least the Patriot Act had an expiration date. Now we are faced with the prospects of a ‘roid-raged Congress leveling confiscatory taxes at target groups they don’t like all in an attempt to cover for their monumental incompetence and this plan that would give a two-time tax cheat and someone on the President’s cabinet the power to decide what firms and institutions they will effectively take over.

What is the criteria for “qualifying” for a takeover? What is it exactly that Geithner and...Larry Summers(?)... Rahm Emanuel(?) will do once they take over these entities? And how will this arrangement not be subject to political chicanery?

What galls us more than anything, though, is that we feel compelled to ask these very specific questions when just the concept, the mere notion of this plan should be dismissed out of hand, no questions asked.

And everybody was up in arms over the expansion of Executive power during the Bush years?

B-Daddy predicted, years ago, that the expansion of Executive power, though passing legal muster and even for legitimate purposes of defending the country against foreign and domestic terror threats would prove to have disastrouus long-range consequences. We didn't want to believe him but our John the Baptist-Messiah/Bush-Obama meme appears to be fleshing out.