Unlimited Government

It was typical summertime in Washington last July—temperature in the 90s, humidity in the 80s—yet the living was anything but easy. President Bush announced on prime-time television his nomination of Judge John Roberts to the Supreme Court, and Congress and the entire capital city sprang briskly into action........

Thus began another national debate over the contemporary meaning of our Constitution—conducted over the airwaves and Internet and in the op-ed pages, culminating in Senate hearings in September where Judge Roberts was lectured and quizzed on Supreme Court case law by senators reciting from cue cards...........

Thomas Jefferson played the pivotal role in choosing the site for our national capital, and selected what was essentially a malarial swamp. He had been in Paris when the Constitution was drafted, and he was not much impressed by its parchment provisions for limited government. So—anticipating the old dictum that “no man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session” — Jefferson added a climatologic backstop. Long, miserable summers were to serve as a natural deterrent to the growth of our national apparatus.

It worked beautifully for more than a century. Legislators, lobbyists, and executive officials fled the capital en masse most summers, right through the late 1920s—when air conditioning was introduced. With the deployment of that subversive technology, there began a notable expansion of the federal leviathan..........

Indeed it would be...

I really shared the frustration of the author when he said this:

A telling illustration of the current practice is the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002—where a genuine First Amendment debate seemed to be brewing within and between the Bush administration and the Congress, only to fizzle out. As a candidate, George W. Bush agreed that Presidents have a duty to veto bills they regard as un-Constitutional, and said that he would veto the then-gestating McCain-Feingold bill because of its infringements on political speech. Then, shortly after arriving at the White House, he sent the Senate a statement urging that campaign finance reforms should protect the rights of “individuals to participate in democracy” and “citizen groups to engage in issue advocacy.” The statement added that if the courts found any provision of such a reform to be un-Constitutional, the entire law should fall.

But when McCain-Feingold passed in 2002, it contained even greater restrictions on individual speech and group issue-advocacy than earlier versions of the bill, and lacked any provision to invalidate the full law if parts proved un-Constitutional. Whereupon President Bush, under intense political pressure following six years of Congressional deliberation on the bill, signed it into law anyway—while noting his “serious Constitutional concerns” and his expectation that “the courts will resolve these legitimate legal questions.”

When the law was challenged in court, however, the Department of Justice did not oppose the speech-limiting provisions the President said he objected to, but rather defended them based on extrapolations of Supreme Court precedents. With its way thus paved, the Court agreed with “the Government” and held the regulations to be Constitutional—noting for good measure its own “proper deference to Congress’s ability to weigh competing Constitutional interests in an area in which it enjoys particular expertise.”

Most of the recent instances of Presidents signing bills while raising Constitutional objections involve provisions that, unlike McCain-Feingold, encroach on the President’s own Constitutional prerogatives. For example, an increasing number of appropriations bills include provisions requiring Administration officials to provide reports or legislative recommendations directly to Congress without going through the President, or even putting Congressional committees directly in the loop of program administration. In cases such as these, the President can enforce the Constitution himself—in effect nullifying just the provisions he objects to—by directing that the provisions be ignored or treated as merely advisory, and leaving it to Congress to decide how to deal with such “illegal” activity.

COMMENT: This is the kind of 'forked-tongue' behavior by the White House which has been so galling. And put the conservatives on a hair-trigger when Meiers was nominated. We already had her number, so to speak...with another devestating example being the Affirmative Action issues with the Michigan Law School...it was Meier's who sabotaged the Justice Dept. case.

I would not be surprised if the intellectual duplicity and hypocrisy...and Meiers over-ruling key conservative constitutional positions... led directly to Ted Olson's leaving the Solicitor General's Office.

Ted Olson - now there's a mind I greatly appreciate, and one of America's greatest patriots IMHO. Although I've watched him for years, the best was when he sat on a panel with Robt Borck where in concert they reiterated what I've long thought, to wit: the re-interpretations of the Equal Protection, Genl Welfare and Commerce clauses, along with the ICC's & Fedl Reserve's creations and the income tax have all contributed to Govt's unconstitutional growth and power at the expense of individuals and the states.

The clauses changed meanings, along with the taxation "authority" to implement them, gave the Democrats nearly 5 decades of built in reelection slush funds in income & SS taxes. The unions they empowered over the individual, and nearly every public employee self interested in Govt expansion, built them a huge voting base.

Starting primarily with big railroads looking to Govt for price rate regulation against small competitors, begat the ICC, now a cornucopia of taxation. Big Biz's hold on Wilson to enter WWI for profit, when he had said we would NOT enter the war in his campaign. Which begat Hitler. FDR's lunge into the European socialism & fascism of central "planning" admired here by progressives, socialists & communists presuming to know better what we need, than do individual citizens themselves. But I think it all centered more on accumulating power in the name of "the common good" by industrialists putting the politicians in that best serve and protect their interests at the expense of small business and taxpayers. These are the traitors that provided finance and supplied munitions and supplies to both sides of both wars. The reason the world went to fiat currencies was to finance wars and grow Govts. In the end we can only hope for Justices that really do understand the context of the Constitution as and when it was written; such as Commerce - it's sole reason for being to ensure free trade among the several states. And that General Welfare meant Govt expenditures MUST benefit ALL citizens equally. And the Equal Protection would ensure Americans were taxed at the same rates, or not treated as "more" equal than others. Funny our worst mistakes were only when we shunned the Constitution and looked outside it for answers. Most of them implemented were exact replicas of Communist Manifesto planks! Graduated taxes, state schools, big Govt, business intervention, Govt pension system, and every other form of perverse incentive imaginable with zero contemplation of the often times undesirable unintended long term consequences of political expediency. With Americans now able to reeducate themselves via the internet outside of leftist public schools and academe, where BTW, Marx still garners great creditability among the economic justice crowd of redistributionist intelligensia, we do have a good chance of rolling back New Dealism. We really should vote almost ALL the bastards out and elect small Govt Libertarians & Republicans instead. Ron Paul and Coburn can stay AFAIC. Let's hope Alito is more Scalia/Thomas like than he appears to be and we can get the American ship of state back on it's true course of individual liberty. Note: for some reason I could get my paragraphs to separate?? Sorry

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