These issues raise fundamental questions about the division of powers among our three branches of government and, clearly, it’s long past due for the Supreme Court to reestablish where those divisions lie.
On the one hand, we CFN-types understandably wish for Mr. Trump to ride roughshod over all of the agencies and institutions that have …
These issues raise fundamental questions about the division of powers among our three branches of government and, clearly, it’s long past due for the Supreme Court to reestablish where those divisions lie.
On the one hand, we CFN-types understandably wish for Mr. Trump to ride roughshod over all of the agencies and institutions that have brought this nation to its present existential crisis. On the other, those who wish for an Imperial Presidency with unlimited powers of disruption would do well to remember that the next president may be another Obama, eager to effectively use those powers against us.
I have long regarded Strict Constructionism of the Constitution as being as silly as the notion of Biblical Inerrancy but, in the present circumstance, it may be that we should hope for the Supreme Court to embrace the arrangement originally put in place by the Founding Fathers, and hope that still provides the president with the powers he needs to clean things up.
Congress was intended to make the laws, including, the details of such laws. However, Congress has pissed away much of its authority, sending it to the bureaucracies of the Executive Branch. Today Congress passes vague laws and then pass the responsibility on to the Bureaucrats to enforce. Here's an example. Let's say Congress wants to pass a law to require bakeries to make tasty chocolate bagels. They bicker and argue and come up with a vague law that says every bakery shall now produce tasty chocolate bagels. However, what they don't put in that new law are the details of that tasty chocolate bagel. How long should it take to make that chocolate bagel? What kind of chocolate should be used? How much sugar? Should those bagels be whole wheat or white flour? What baking temperature should they bake them at? How many chocolate bagels does each bakery need to produce in a week? No, what they do is produce a vague law. This then results in the Presidency putting together a Department of Bagelry tasked with making sure bakeries are making tasty chocolate bagels. The Department of Bagelry now sets the standards and the requirements because the Congress was too damned lazy to do its job. Thus we have runaway, rogue agencies doing whatever the hell they want because Congress won't do its job.
My point? Separation of powers are important. We need them. But first, we need a Congress that is willing to do its fucking job and right now all we have are idiots populating the halls of Congress.
I quite agree. Please provide us with a simple, reliable procedure for replacing the crooked, impotent idiots we now have in Congress with wise able statesmen.
Return to secret ballots in Congressional and Senate votes. Allow our lawgivers to vote their conscious, not necessarily the party line or that of their paymasters on K street.
For over 100 years we've been told we need "experts" running things. Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and especially the incorrigibly evil son of a preacher, Thomas Woodrow Wilson believed that civil service and government should be run by experts and geniuses because average people are corrupt morons who have trouble putting their coffee in a cup. Wilson, a racist whose goal with education was "to make a man as unlike his father as possible," openly said the Constitution needed to be gotten rid of because it didn't fit with his (and Edward Mandel House's) plans to create an administrative state in which it wouldn't matter who was elected because bureaucrats would run everything. That has been one of the biggest goals of the Democrats and Establishment Republicans ever since. They've pretty much achieved their goals: Senators and Representatives seldom do anything of lasting import, unless you count endless blathering on tv important. On the rare occasions actual reformers or statesmen have arrived on the scene, they've been marginalized, assassinated, or assimilated into the Blob. Subversives like Obama are sold to us as reforming statesmen, and the public buys the argument because of their voices, appearance, and alliance with propagandists who call themselves "journalists"; these would-be guarantors of freedom only speak of imperial presidents when someone like Reagan or Trump comes on the scene and threatens the status quo by not following the Establishment's program to the letter.
Ever since I read "We who are about to die, salute you" as a teenager, I've been studying the steady decline of Rome and how our failing Republic is tracking it.
I am also quite aware that the situation is distinct, from top to bottom, but even so the parallels are eerie,
Your comment about an "Emperor" inspired this reaction.
IMHO, the Constitution has the same job as the Bible, to define a structure that defies evil, the spread of immorality. Both ID the evil and give suggestions on how to fend it off.
Of course, and that's why I have juxtaposed them. Both were worthy attempts, in their day, to provide guidance and a moral framework, and both have glaring defects that are unhelpful in today's world. Give up the notion of Inerrancy, and every verse in the Bible is opened to debate; stray from Strict Constructionism and the slippery slope could lead to a new constitutional convention and the dissolution of the union.
In that case, don't even bother opening it. We have ministers and priests in favor of gay marriage and worse. That's where you approach gets us. Tradition must be the guide to interpretation.
Leviticus 18 sets God’s limits on unlawful sexual relations. As this passage is the basis for what God considers sin, it should be the basis for all those ministers, pastors, rabbis and priests should be sermonizing and counseling. Read the passage and you will realize how immoral this country has become.
Some people want a living constitution. I like mine safely dead - Anthony Scalia, found dead with a pillow on his face. Some posters here believe he just liked to sleep that way. There is no end to human stupidity and cupidity.
These issues raise fundamental questions about the division of powers among our three branches of government and, clearly, it’s long past due for the Supreme Court to reestablish where those divisions lie.
On the one hand, we CFN-types understandably wish for Mr. Trump to ride roughshod over all of the agencies and institutions that have brought this nation to its present existential crisis. On the other, those who wish for an Imperial Presidency with unlimited powers of disruption would do well to remember that the next president may be another Obama, eager to effectively use those powers against us.
I have long regarded Strict Constructionism of the Constitution as being as silly as the notion of Biblical Inerrancy but, in the present circumstance, it may be that we should hope for the Supreme Court to embrace the arrangement originally put in place by the Founding Fathers, and hope that still provides the president with the powers he needs to clean things up.
Congress was intended to make the laws, including, the details of such laws. However, Congress has pissed away much of its authority, sending it to the bureaucracies of the Executive Branch. Today Congress passes vague laws and then pass the responsibility on to the Bureaucrats to enforce. Here's an example. Let's say Congress wants to pass a law to require bakeries to make tasty chocolate bagels. They bicker and argue and come up with a vague law that says every bakery shall now produce tasty chocolate bagels. However, what they don't put in that new law are the details of that tasty chocolate bagel. How long should it take to make that chocolate bagel? What kind of chocolate should be used? How much sugar? Should those bagels be whole wheat or white flour? What baking temperature should they bake them at? How many chocolate bagels does each bakery need to produce in a week? No, what they do is produce a vague law. This then results in the Presidency putting together a Department of Bagelry tasked with making sure bakeries are making tasty chocolate bagels. The Department of Bagelry now sets the standards and the requirements because the Congress was too damned lazy to do its job. Thus we have runaway, rogue agencies doing whatever the hell they want because Congress won't do its job.
My point? Separation of powers are important. We need them. But first, we need a Congress that is willing to do its fucking job and right now all we have are idiots populating the halls of Congress.
I quite agree. Please provide us with a simple, reliable procedure for replacing the crooked, impotent idiots we now have in Congress with wise able statesmen.
Stop letting most people vote. And ban all campaign contributions.
Spot on.
Howard,
Return to secret ballots in Congressional and Senate votes. Allow our lawgivers to vote their conscious, not necessarily the party line or that of their paymasters on K street.
For over 100 years we've been told we need "experts" running things. Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and especially the incorrigibly evil son of a preacher, Thomas Woodrow Wilson believed that civil service and government should be run by experts and geniuses because average people are corrupt morons who have trouble putting their coffee in a cup. Wilson, a racist whose goal with education was "to make a man as unlike his father as possible," openly said the Constitution needed to be gotten rid of because it didn't fit with his (and Edward Mandel House's) plans to create an administrative state in which it wouldn't matter who was elected because bureaucrats would run everything. That has been one of the biggest goals of the Democrats and Establishment Republicans ever since. They've pretty much achieved their goals: Senators and Representatives seldom do anything of lasting import, unless you count endless blathering on tv important. On the rare occasions actual reformers or statesmen have arrived on the scene, they've been marginalized, assassinated, or assimilated into the Blob. Subversives like Obama are sold to us as reforming statesmen, and the public buys the argument because of their voices, appearance, and alliance with propagandists who call themselves "journalists"; these would-be guarantors of freedom only speak of imperial presidents when someone like Reagan or Trump comes on the scene and threatens the status quo by not following the Establishment's program to the letter.
It's too late. The greed of the special interests perverts all conversations. The Republic is over, and the Emperor has appeared.
Ever since I read "We who are about to die, salute you" as a teenager, I've been studying the steady decline of Rome and how our failing Republic is tracking it.
I am also quite aware that the situation is distinct, from top to bottom, but even so the parallels are eerie,
Your comment about an "Emperor" inspired this reaction.
Trump = Nero
Cackler = Elagabalus
IMHO, the Constitution has the same job as the Bible, to define a structure that defies evil, the spread of immorality. Both ID the evil and give suggestions on how to fend it off.
Of course, and that's why I have juxtaposed them. Both were worthy attempts, in their day, to provide guidance and a moral framework, and both have glaring defects that are unhelpful in today's world. Give up the notion of Inerrancy, and every verse in the Bible is opened to debate; stray from Strict Constructionism and the slippery slope could lead to a new constitutional convention and the dissolution of the union.
In that case, don't even bother opening it. We have ministers and priests in favor of gay marriage and worse. That's where you approach gets us. Tradition must be the guide to interpretation.
Leviticus 18 sets God’s limits on unlawful sexual relations. As this passage is the basis for what God considers sin, it should be the basis for all those ministers, pastors, rabbis and priests should be sermonizing and counseling. Read the passage and you will realize how immoral this country has become.
In today's society, "moral framework" seems to be the great unknown.
Some people want a living constitution. I like mine safely dead - Anthony Scalia, found dead with a pillow on his face. Some posters here believe he just liked to sleep that way. There is no end to human stupidity and cupidity.