A LITTLE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY INSTEAD OF SOME ECONOMIC HISTORY

In some posts the Author throws in some economic history or economic background to help the readers understand an issue. This is called context, a framing function that is sorely lacking in American media and political discourse.

So let’s talk some constitutional history and some basics about the Constitution and the checks and balances that should exist between the legislative branch (Congress), the executive branch (president), and the judiciary (Federal Courts).

The Author was trained as a lawyer and a required class at Indiana University is Constitutional Law I. This is not a course in free speech, search and seizure or the bill of rights issues that garner the most public attention. What Con Law I covers is the extent of power of each branch of government, the checks and balances that each has over the other, and the interplay between the branches and the delicate balance. Because the class is a law class and you read cases and talk about legal decisions, much of the class addresses attempts by the executive or the legislature to usurp power from a coequal branch. Most cases involve executive overreaching, because that is what presidents (especially this one) tend to do. In a sense, Con Law I is “constitutional history”.

Many Americans, less than know what Paris Hilton has tattooed on her anorexic frame, but still a good number, are gravely concerned by the current Bush Administration’s executive overreaching and flagrant, unabated and confessed violations of law. From all over the political spectrum.[i] John Dean of Watergate infamy said, “George Bush is the first president to ever confess to an impeachable offense”. (Intentional contravention of FISA, the law that prohibits warrantless wiretapping.). But of course Congress, in gross dereliction of its Constitutional duty to check executive usurpation of power, refuses to even investigate.

POLITICS NOT AS USUAL

This Blog tends to stay away from overtly political issues. But the unconstitutional conduct of the Bush administration[ii], the overt failure of the Republican House and Senate to discipline their wayward partisan comrade for reasons of self-preservation, and a Supreme Court that contains judges that may be in league with the presidential excesses (Justice Alito subscribes to the myth of the “Unitary Executive”, that all political power can be exercised by the president), requires that Americans take notice and “throw the Bastards out”.

This is not a partisan issue. The US Constitution is a blue print for government that has functioned, with some success, for over 200 years. Read what Glenn Greenwald, author of “How Would a Patriot Act? Defending America from a President Run Amok” said in a recent interview:

… I believe our system of government really is a unique achievement in modern political history. That’s because of the values created by the Constitution that the Founders, after a lot of debate, came to embrace. The Founders talk about this in the Federalist Papers - and part of their debates were in the Constitutional Convention. They knew that no system of government would be invulnerable to some future tyranny. Their principle challenge when creating a system of government was to figure out how all these rights would really be protected in the future. It’s one thing to say you have the right to free speech and to freedom of religion, and the right not to be punished without due process. But the question then becomes, how do you really protect against tyrannical leaders in the future?

The government that they created was designed, first and foremost, to prevent any one individual or political group from consolidating unchecked power, and from insisting that the country’s prosperity and its freedom lay in putting the trust in a single individual, rather than distrusting our political leaders and insisting on their compliance under the law in a transparent way. That is really the centerpiece of what our government is – insistence that political leaders always remain limited in their power and subject to the law – precisely because we don’t trust government officials to exercise power properly. That really is how the Founders wanted our liberties to be protected.

What we have now is the very opposite of that. We have a President who is claiming the right to exercise power without any limitations. To me, what a patriot does is take a stand in defense of the principles that have made our country great.

Those principles are all under assault by this Administration. The powers they’re insisting on are exactly the powers that the Founders waged the Revolutionary War to get away from. They’re the powers of a king.

Anyone who loves the United States and believes in the principles and values that it embodies will be opposed to the kinds of theories of power and abuses of power that this Administration is embracing, regardless of political ideology or partisan allegiance. Those are the values that have always defined what America is.[iii]

NO SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT IS IMMUNE FROM THE RISKS OF TYRANNY. NONE. NOT THIS ONE, OR ANY OTHER.

THE DESERT OF THE REAL TOLERATES AND WELCOMES DISSENT, BUT NOT POLITCAL COWARDICE. AND WE MAKE TOOTHPICKS FROM THE SUN-BLEACHED BONES OF TYRANTS IN THE DESERT OF THE REAL!

[i] http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0609-23.htm. The conservative libertarian Cato Institute has produced a report called “Power Surge: The Constitutional Record of George W. Bush.”
[ii] For a darkly comedic take on the contemptible “signing statements” Bush appends to Congressional laws he announces he will ignore, see: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060906E.shtml
[iii] http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=20937