Old_Trapper70
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2014
- Messages
- 2,383
As usual they lack the courage to do what is right for the country. What are they scared of?
http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-...blers&kwp_0=417517&kwp_4=1593530&kwp_1=688810
"It is often said that the U.S. Presidency is a relatively weak office—but that is a contingent statement. To prevent the President from gaining too much power, or abusing that power, the Founding Fathers divided authority among the different branches of government, and established some fundamental governing principles. These are the fabled checks and balances, arranged, as James Bryce, the British jurist, noted in his venerable 1888 tome, “The American Commonwealth,” to “restrain any one department from tyranny.”
But the checks and balances only work if each of Bryce’s departments agrees to play its allotted role. A President enabled by a spineless and supine Congress that fails to exercise its oversight powers isn’t a weak executive at all: he is a potential despot. Using his authority to hire and fire federal officials, he can rapidly remake the government to his own design, appointing loyalists to key positions, eliminating potential threats, and undermining alternative repositories of power.
Authoritarian leaders in foreign countries seize and maintain power this way. And, despite his bungling start, this is the project that Donald Trump appears to have embarked upon. Since the end of January, he has appointed one of his closest political allies, Jeff Sessions, to run the Justice Department; fired an acting Attorney General, Sally Yates, who had warned the White House that the national-security adviser was compromised; and axed forty-six U.S. Attorneys, one of whom, Preet Bharara, had jurisdiction over Trump’s business empire. Now the head of the F.B.I., James Comey, has been ousted, at a time when the agency is conducting an investigation into possible collusion between Trump’s election campaign and the Russian government."
http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-...blers&kwp_0=417517&kwp_4=1593530&kwp_1=688810
"It is often said that the U.S. Presidency is a relatively weak office—but that is a contingent statement. To prevent the President from gaining too much power, or abusing that power, the Founding Fathers divided authority among the different branches of government, and established some fundamental governing principles. These are the fabled checks and balances, arranged, as James Bryce, the British jurist, noted in his venerable 1888 tome, “The American Commonwealth,” to “restrain any one department from tyranny.”
But the checks and balances only work if each of Bryce’s departments agrees to play its allotted role. A President enabled by a spineless and supine Congress that fails to exercise its oversight powers isn’t a weak executive at all: he is a potential despot. Using his authority to hire and fire federal officials, he can rapidly remake the government to his own design, appointing loyalists to key positions, eliminating potential threats, and undermining alternative repositories of power.
Authoritarian leaders in foreign countries seize and maintain power this way. And, despite his bungling start, this is the project that Donald Trump appears to have embarked upon. Since the end of January, he has appointed one of his closest political allies, Jeff Sessions, to run the Justice Department; fired an acting Attorney General, Sally Yates, who had warned the White House that the national-security adviser was compromised; and axed forty-six U.S. Attorneys, one of whom, Preet Bharara, had jurisdiction over Trump’s business empire. Now the head of the F.B.I., James Comey, has been ousted, at a time when the agency is conducting an investigation into possible collusion between Trump’s election campaign and the Russian government."
