Over at OpenCongress, I found this blog entry that reads in part:
Article II, Section I of the Constitution grants the President “executive power,” meaning, theoretically, that Presidents can use their authority to do just about anything they want. However, the problem with the idea of Obama granting an executive order extending unemployment benefits comes from language a little later in the Constitution, in Section III of Article II. That sections states that the President shall “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” This language is designed to protect our democratic form of government form being overtaken by a rogue President who wants to become dictator
This coming from a blogger by the name of Donny Shaw. How this idiot got to blog for this website is beyond me, especially if he gets paid to do so, because he could not be more wrong.
Article II, Section I reads:
The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
…
The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
…
The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.
Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
(Note, I’d removed the parts that were overridden by subsequent amendments, none of which have anything to do with defining the powers of the executive branch)
And Section II reads:
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.
Do you read any language in there about the executive power being able to do anything? I don’t. Executive Orders were, until the age of the tyrant Franklin D. Roosevelt, directed at bureaucrats in the Federal government and didn’t apply to everyone else. I know that’s not the precedent today, but today a lot of what the Federal government does is flatly and ultimately unconstitutional.
While Donny Shaw comes to correct conclusion, that executive power is limited only by the acts of Congress, he still displays an apparent lack of reasoning when it comes to the Constitution. Anyone with any lick of common sense (which is less and less ‘common’ these days) could read both sections and find no authority for the President to change laws as he sees fit. Basically, his ‘theory’ about Article II, Section I is more like a fairytale story than a legitimate constitutional theory.
With morons like Donny Shaw, it’s no wonder that we have a Congress that ignores the Constitutional limits placed on them, an out of control executive with the self-granted legal authority to assassinate American citizens, and a court system that makes decisions based on personal preferences rather than based on the U.S. Constitution (and yes, even conservative jurists do it).
More and more, I find that people are basically idiots and morons.