This is the same Congress that says nothing about the Supreme Court encroaching on its powers. I guess you cannot score political points against judges for life as easily as you can against a sitting President.
Well actually in this article, Specter does decry the Supreme Court encroaching on Congressional authority: ''We're undergoing a tsunami here with the flood coming from the executive branch on one side and the judicial branch on the other," Specter said. ''There may as well soon not be a Congress. . . . And I think that most members don't understand what's happening."
I don't like Specter but he is right on this issue. All legislative authority in our system of republican self-government rests with the people which we exercise through our elected representatives. This authority is what makes our system a republic and not one governed by arbitrary rule or what our founders called a "tyranny."
The incursions against Congressional legislative authority (by the President or by the courts) is a usurpation of the legislative authority of the people and it constitutes an attempt to overturn the central accomplishment of the American revolution -- popular self-government. Under our constitutional system the President may veto a bill he thinks is unconstitutional, he may not ignore it and refuse to enfore it. Presidential executive orders (stroke of the pen, law of the land) present a similar usurpation of the people's legislative authority which I believe are both unconstitutional and inconsistent with self-government.
Dealing with these usurpations of legislative authority is the duty of Congress in order to preserve our republican system. The remedy provided by the constitution in the case of the President is impeachment but dealing with the courts will be less straight forward. I have read proposals that include Congress passing legislation restricting the jurisdiction of the courts to a constitutional amendment that limits supreme court terms to ten years. This is a fundamental issue that "we the people" can not ignore if we want our children to live in a self-governing society.