The Most Anemic Branch

[struggle4progress]

By: Bruce Fein
February 19, 2007 07:07 PM EST

The Founding Fathers feared Congress would usurp the powers of the executive and judicial branches. Like a surprise O. Henry ending, however, the legislative branch in recent years has become the most anemic. In national security matters, Congress has ceded the lion's share of authority to the president. In domestic affairs, the White House characteristically leads and Congress either affirms or balks.

Congress' informing function has also withered. It has acquiesced in extravagant claims of executive privilege to enable the president to conceal government mismanagement and lawlessness. Its legislative function has been defanged by signing statements declaring the president's intent to disregard laws he has signed into being because he opines they are unconstitutional -- in practical effect a line-item veto that the Supreme Court struck down in 1998. Congress responded not by welcoming responsibility and accountability for taxing and spending, but by seeking to fashion an alternative line-item veto statute that would further aggrandize the White House ...

Congressional anemia begets twofold evils. Unchecked executive power invariably spawns law violations and abuses of official authority. In the 1970s the Church Committee, a precursor of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence named for its chairman, Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, examined 40 years of unchecked presidential authority to collect intelligence. Its findings were chilling: evidence of illegal mail openings, illegal interceptions of international telegraphs, misuse of the NSA for non-intelligence purposes and burglaries and spying on the likes Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon and news reporters ...

The steady accumulation of power in the executive branch is eerily reminiscent of the destruction of the Roman Republic. If Congress does not assert itself, the decline and fall of the American Republic will be inescapable.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0207/2841.html

[Lasher]

1. Good OP. Too bad it sank like a stone.

Maybe it would have gotten more attention if it had been titled, 'Britney Spears Poses Nude!'

[tom_paine]

2. Sad, but true. K & R

[tom_paine]

3. OK, well, K but no R. Telling me this thread was started more than 24 hrs ago

What, is the DU server now working for the Busheviks? :wtf:

I tried.

[ixion]

4. kick

great op-ed!

Deserves to be on the greatest page, IMO.