I previously posted about the latest rash of scandalous photos coming out of Afghanistan showing U.S. military atrocities under Obama’s command, and wondering if the media would pick up on it the way they did when it was Bush’s army… Well, here’s a twist I wasn’t expecting: yes, one of the U.S. media, Rolling Stone, [...]
Jeffrey Goldberg, a correspondent for the Atlantic, cast a spotlight on yet another disgustingly overt example of pure bias in the mainstream media, particularly at the anti-Semitic Reuters newswire. He points to a Reuters news item which contains the following despicable sentences: Police said it was a “terrorist attack” — Israel’s term for a Palestinian [...]
In the [sparse] reporting of the Palestinians’ massacre of the Fogel family, several newspapers stand out with their distorted sense of “balance”, i.e., where they feel overwhelmingly uncomfortable describing the barbarity of the Palestinians without at least taking a swipe or two at the Israelis, no matter how patently irrelevant or disgustingly disrespectful it comes [...]
Rethinking Czars
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A couple of months ago, I posted about Obama’s multitude of czars; how it seems that just about any lunatic can be a czar since, after all, the non-cabinet appointment conveniently avoids any confirmation process; and about how Obama has been exploiting that technicality to shuttle all his crazy friends away from Senate confirmations and straight into his “unofficial cabinet”.
Recently, I read a piece in the Weekly Standard by Steven Menashi which brings a different perspective to the whole czar issue. He points out that the whole idea of the Senate approving every single advisor to the president severely detracts from the separation of powers that our founding fathers put in place. What right does the legislative branch have to pick the staff for the executive branch?
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) said that “it is Congress’s duty to know who is serving at the highest levels of government, what they are doing, and what qualifications or complications these people bring to the job… The deployment of this many czars sets a dangerous precedent that undermines the Constitution’s guarantee of separated powers. It must be stopped.”
But, as Menashi points out:
When the executive branch formulates policy through czars accountable only to the president, does that not leave the legislative and executive powers more separate, rather than less?
The president should be entitled to choose whomever he wants as advisors. After all, he can clearly formulate his opinions in any way he chooses, provided that he ultimately puts forth his own decisions and stands behind them. In fact, if he so chooses, he can form his opinions by watching Saturday morning cartoons and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it.
The key is that if Congress doesn’t like what he’s doing, there are clear checks and balances which Congress can employ to overrule the president. That’s the point of the separation of powers together with checks and balances.
Menashi says:
Congress may reject whatever policies the president formulates with the aid of his czars, of course, but Byrd and Hutchison want the legislature to oversee policy formulation within the executive. That seems to be the greater threat to separated powers.
Senators expect to exercise such oversight because Congress has intruded upon the executive branch throughout the last half-century. Since the expansion of the federal bureaucracy during the New Deal, agencies nominally within the executive branch receive mandates directly from Congress, bypassing the president. So executive authority, which Alexander Hamilton expected to be characterized by energy and dispatch, is fragmented and divided between the president, Congress, and agency heads invested with their own independent authority. It’s not surprising that presidents, who are after all elected to implement new policies, have responded to the fragmented executive by seeking independent advisers who can help formulate policy and monitor the bureaucracy in hopes of keeping it in line. FDR had his Brain Trust; Obama has his czars.
I have to say that this really has me rethinking my whole previous stance. He has a very good point. How did we get to a place where the executive branch is so fragmented and divided between all these other authorities? And, Obama’s incompetence aside, do we really want those morons in Congress choosing the president’s advisors?
And, hey, if we let the president continue to choose his own advisors, then when any of his advisors turn out to be lunatics (think: Van Jones), all the blame will still clearly lie on the shoulders of the president and he will have to deal with the repercussions and any fallout over his apparent lack of judgment.