Today we’re going to start talking about the Constitution. People of the right claim to love it, some of the left think its hopelessly outdated. My experience over that last few years says that many of the people that claim to love it really only like a few of their favorite amendments, like maybe the first, second, and fourth, and don’t care much at all for the rest of it.
As most of you know the US Government is organized by the Constitution into 3 branches. They are, according to Senator-Elect Tuberville from Alabama, “The House, the Senate, and the executive”. Of course, this is wrong, and Mr. Tuberville is about to swear allegiance to something he knows very little about. Kind of like signing a contract without reading it. The legislative, executive, and judicial are the three branches. President, Congress, and the Courts if you like.
Today we will talk about the executive branch, led by the President. Article 2 of the Constitution specifies the powers of the executive branch, which, according to President Trump in several live interviews are, “Whatever I want to do”. This, of course, is incorrect and further demonstration that ignorance of the Constitution is not an impediment to be elected to follow it and preserve it. Article 2 goes into some detail on how to elect a President and who is eligible. These are the parts of the text that lay out what the President is supposed to be in charge of:
“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”
“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”
“He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments. The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.”
“He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.”
So basically, the President oversees relations with foreign powers, appoints judges, cabinet officials, and ambassadors, commands the armed forces, reports to the Congress how things are going and makes recommendations, and can call the Congress into session when he needs them to do things right away, and sees to it that the laws of the US are “faithfully executed”.
This is how things are supposed to work. The President’s power under the Constitution is limited by design. He isn’t the King. However, the people and the Congress have allowed completely unconstitutional expansion of this. Barack Obama, by executive order, told the DHS to stop enforcing parts of immigration law that he didn’t like. This is a complete failure to “faithfully execute” the law and should have been an impeachable offense.
When President Trump tried to undo this violation of the Constitution, a judge issued an injunction to prevent it, another violation of the Constitution and said judge should have been impeached.
Congress decided to grant the President a fairly wide set of powers to be used in national emergencies. The intent was to allow the President to act quickly and temporarily in cases where delay would be harmful. A reasonable person would assume these actions were things the Congress would approve of in time but needed to happened faster than Congress moves to approve things. Presidents have used this power to declare “national emergencies” over broken shoestrings and simply run around the will of Congress and Congress has done nothing to reign this in.
President Trump asked for money to build a border wall. Congress gave him less than he wanted. He simply declared a national emergency and grabbed the money from the defense budget. I had people seriously defending this by calling the influx of Latin Americans looking for jobs to an invasion that need military action in response. This was nonsense. A person who is about my age said to me, “He asked Congress for the money and the wouldn’t give it to him. What is he supposed to do? Just forget about it?” Well yes, that’s what the Constitution says. The Congress alone is in charge of appropriating money and deciding how it is spent. This is a violation of the Constitution that should have been far more impeachable than asking a foreign law enforcement agency to investigate Hunter Biden.
Both parties are completely happy to ignore the Constitution’s separation of powers if it gets them what they want.
The Congress is supposed to make law and the executive branch execute the law. Congress has decided that making most laws is too unpopular at home and has delegated, in violation of the Constitution, most of this to the executive branch. We now have a regulatory bureaucracy under the President that issues reams of regulations which are in fact laws. According to an estimate by civil liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate, the average American commits 3 felonies a day, most of which are violations of laws the Congress had no part in creating and the general public is completely unaware of. We have created a state in which almost anyone can be prosecuted and fined or jailed. All you have to do is anger the wrong lawyer or politician.
We are supposed to have a Presidency with a quite limited set of powers and responsibilities. We don’t anymore. Congress no longer even has a say in most of the laws we live under. We elect people like Tommy Tuberville and Donald Trump that don’t have a clue about the Constitution they are supposed to be obedient to. We say we aren’t electing a King but we expect the Congress to bow to them as if they are.
The founders of this country knew that people tend towards totalitarianism if not properly restrained by law. That law will only restrain people that respect it or are held accountable to it. The USSR had a bill of rights that looked a lot like ours. Laws are just words on paper, by themselves they aren’t enough. We have to have a citizenry and political class willing to set aside what they want sometimes to obey the law. What I see now is a political class that is willing to rip the law to shreds to get what they want and a country full of fans, not citizens, that cheers them on. I am not optimistic.
