...of raw POWER is such an aphrodisiac.Face it: The President just came from the Senate. The Vice-President just came from DECADES in the Senate. The Chief of Staff just came from the House of Reps, where he was in line to become Speaker one day.
This will be one hellishly effective administration, on both the legislative and executive sides.
Alea iacta est.
Remember the Enabling Act, circa about 1934?
ReplyDeleteJa.
ReplyDeleteWonder if they'll pull a Dodd and use the original German text as a starting point a la GCA 68?
They won't need some new enabling act. They already have an "enabling act" in the form of the AUMF of 2001, which has been construed by federal courts as authorizing the President (and that now means Obama) to wage a world wide war on terrorism, to include here in the continental US. And that "war" is vague enough to be applied to American citizens as well as to foreigners.
ReplyDeleteMost understand about the dangers of executive orders as a method of rule by executive decree, but far more dangerous is the claim that the president is not just administering the executive branch, but that he is acting as commander in chief.
The claimed powers of the commander in chief need no law by Congress, and those claimed powers have been vastly expanded during the Bush years.
The 2001 AUMF just gives the president all the more claimed authority, since he can argue that whatever he is doing is being done as part of the war on terrorism, which Congress has authorized.