Executive or Imperial Branch?

[marmar]

from Consortium News:



Executive or Imperial Branch?

By Ivan Eland
May 7, 2008



Editor’s Note: Lost amid the U.S. news media’s focus on important matters, like Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s latest outburst, has been any interest in trivial questions, such as how George W. Bush has trampled the U.S. Constitution, stampeded the nation into a disastrous war and walked all over Congress.

In this guest essay, the Independent Institute’s Ivan Eland takes a stab at getting the American people to pay some attention to the future of the Republic:

More memos recently have surfaced that were written early in the Bush administration by John C. Yoo from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel -- the man who gave us the administration's horrifyingly narrow definition of torture.

As difficult as it is to believe, the recently released memos are even scarier than the original torture memo.

Yoo boldly asserts that the president's power during wartime is nearly unlimited. For example, he argues that Congress has no right to pass laws governing the interrogations of enemy combatants and the commander in chief can ignore such laws if passed, and can, without constraint, seize oceangoing ships.

The memos also argue that military operations in the United States against terrorists are not subject to the Fourth Amendment requirement for search warrants or the Fifth Amendment requirement for due process.

This broad interpretation of executive power and the president's commander-in-chief role would make the nation's founders jump out of their graves.

Purposefully, the Constitutional Convention enumerated the large number of Congress's powers in Article I, and gave most powers related to defense and foreign affairs to the people's branch.

In particular, the war power was given to Congress. The chief executive, whose powers were enumerated in the much more brief Article II, was given the commander-in-chief role, but this was intended narrowly, only as commander of U.S. troops on the battlefield.

Instead of declaring war, which has fallen out of fashion, the Congress, after 9/11, passed a resolution authorizing the president to go after al-Qaeda overseas but deliberately omitted domestic activities from that authorization. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/050608a.html