The legislature has become obsolete
Hitler got the Reichstag to effectively dissolve itself and turn its powers over to him when it passed the Enabling Act.
Nowadays in the US that’s not even necessary – just go around Congress through executive orders, and if no one can stop you, then you’ve got it made without any pesky legislative squabbling. After all, kingships are so much more efficient in their lawmaking.
This is how the practice has evolved:
It took Barack Obama seven years to go from “A president is not above the law” to “We’re not just going to be waiting for legislation … I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone.” Joe Biden did it in just three months. In October 2020, candidate Biden explained, “[Y]ou can’t [legislate] by executive order unless you’re a dictator.” Three months later, President Biden issued 29 executive actions within three days of taking office. Now, after 100 days, Biden has issued more than 100 executive orders, proclamations, memoranda, and other executive actions; a display of executive unilateralism that would make even President Obama blush.
Actually, it wouldn’t. Firstly, I believe Biden has Obama’s blessing on this and probably even Obama’s direction. Secondly, whatever restraint Obama initially exercised during his own presidency was the result of gauging the readiness of the American public. Obama slowly paved the way, keeping an eye on what people were ready for, and when the frog was good and boiled it was decided that the public was ready for the Biden administration’s extension of the tactic:
As of April 29, Biden had issued 41 executive orders, more than twice the number issued by either Obama (19) or Bush (11), and two-thirds more than Trump (25). Counting other unilateral executive actions, but excluding mostly symbolic actions like, say, declaring a National Agriculture Day, Biden issued 64 compared to 54, 41, and 20 for Trump, Obama, and Bush, respectively.
There are some nifty graphs and charts there which show how incredibly far ahead Biden is not only of Trump or Obama or Bush, but of most previous presidents except FDR.
Under Article II, the president’s authority to issue executive orders must come either from a power granted to him by the Constitution or by a law passed by Congress. The President can wield only the power he already has. He can’t give himself new powers, such as the legislative powers reserved to Congress in Article I of the Constitution. When the President exceeds his authority by legislating via executive action, he violates the fundamental system of checks and balances embedded in our constitutional form of government.
The temptation of unchecked executive power is strong. Even former constitutional law professors can eventually give in to the temptation of unchecked unilateral executive action, even though they know darned well they shouldn’t. Just ask President Obama, who was correct in 2010 when he said of immigration reform, “I am president, I am not king. I can’t do these things just by myself.” He was right again in March 2011 when he said, “With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that’s just not the case.” And again in May 2011, he could have been teaching a class on constitutional law when he explained “[I can’t] just bypass Congress and change the (immigration) law myself. … That’s not how a democracy works.” But the law professor lost out to the unitary executive and, in 2012, he went ahead and did it anyway. Whether or not you consider DACA to be good legislation is neither here nor there – it is legislation unlawfully handed down by the Executive Branch.
Not only is President Biden on track to seize and use more administrative power than any president since FDR, but he seems just as serious about ignoring and bypassing the legislature. A president’s first 100 days normally see him with a groundswell of support that he can use to push important legislation in Congress. But not Biden. Biden has signed only 11 bills into law during his first 100 days. By comparison, Donald Trump signed 28 by this point in his presidency.
We still have the power of the Supreme Court to act as a check on the executive branch, right? … Right?! You … might want to sit down. In addition to snubbing the Legislative Branch, President Biden fired a warning shot across the bow of the Judicial Branch with his order on April 9 establishing the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. The purpose of the commission is obvious to those with eyes to see: to provide political cover for plans to engage in FDR-style court-packing, or else to hold the threat of such a move over the head of the Court like an Administrative Sword of Damocles.
That’s a lucid summary of some trends we’ve noted on this blog for years. Anyone who is surprised by it hasn’t been paying attention. And anyone who is pleased by it is happy with partisan far-leftist tyranny.
I’ll also add that many of Biden’s orders are unsupported by the American people and that are in stark contrast to the way he and his PR people painted him during his campaign. He was the conciliator and the moderate – something that should never have fooled anyone, but which fooled a lot of people. Even now, although he’s been the opposite of moderate, that’s still the way many people write about him, and I would guess that a lot of low information voters continue to think it’s true.
Trump’s orders were a contrast in that they were exactly what one would expect, congruent with the way he campaigned. I can’t think of any topic on which Trump fooled the American people.
[NOTE: It should be understood that in this and in all other posts of mine, the term “Biden” may either be referring to Biden himself or whatever group of aides and advisors might actually be running the show.]
The next step, which I am sure is coming, is to ignore court rulings against the orders.
The federal courts have behaved badly enough over the last 60-odd years that they’ve been begging elected officials to ignore them. See Hawaiian judges with their nationwide injunctions.
When your goal is to fundamentally transform…then:
Who really needs the legislature, anyway?
Who needs the border?
Who needs state governments?
Who needs law enforcement?
Who needs an honest media?
Who needs honest elections?
Who needs elections, period?
Who needs the CDC?—Oops, everyone knows why we need the CDC….
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bryan-preston/2021/05/04/bidens-open-border-is-fueling-the-deadliest-drug-epidemic-in-u-s-history-n1444556
But at least we know why China and Iran, et al. need “Biden” in the WH….
In any event, rest be assured that as long as all the right people get their cut, everything should be fine and dandy. (And many, many more George Floyds will no doubt be very “useful”.)
File under: “Biden”ismo
Where are the judges who blocked Trump’s executive orders?
Cheering on a Democrat’s executive orders.
And yet, serious pushback at an outrageous case of criminal misconduct perpetrated by a leading prosecutor in Missouri:
https://justthenews.com/accountability/political-ethics/investigation-finds-massive-wrongdoing-prosecution-against-ex
Key graf:
“St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner, one of the early local prosecutors bankrolled by liberal megadonor George Soros since 2016, engaged in 62 acts of misconduct that resulted in 79 false representations during Greitens’ now-dismissed criminal prosecution, according to Chief Disciplinary Counsel Alan Pratzel’s memo…”
Multiply this by how many times?
At the crossroads, wondering which way things will go…
Where are the judges who blocked Trump’s executive orders?
Cheering on a Democrat’s executive orders.
Partisan Democrats were enraged that the Senate ignored the nomination of Merrick Garland. We’ve gotten a look at who Garland really is given his participation in the Flynn outrage and now his performance in office.
They’re simply going to go too far. Wait for it. They’re constitutionally incapable of avoiding the cliff’s edge because at this point, the ideological imperatives to which they are bound no longer allow for incremental methods. Whatever the trigger wire will be for open conflict is less important than that they will create incidents that are so far beyond the pale as to be intolerable. They are far closer to that point than they realize.
They think that it’s too late for the frog to jump out of the pot because they think that the constitution is a suicide pact.
@GB:
“They think that it’s too late for the frog to jump out of the pot because they think that the constitution is a suicide pact.”
You’re talking about maddened degenerates whose more natural analogy would be a Bondage Dungeon.
Spot on that they’re headed for the cliff edge and have no idea just how close they are. But they want to get there, and quickly. There’s a very strong strain of Thanatos infecting them.
Conrad Black thinks we are close to the limit.
The second indicator of political opinion is the independent policy areas where the new administration’s performance is measured. Here, the sands are running out in the hour-clock for the Biden administration’s attempt to smoke far-left legislation through on the threadbare flying carpet of anti-Trumpism.
The vulnerability of President Biden’s position is underscored by the fact that apart from his handling of the coronavirus and related problems, the majority disapprove of his performance in all other areas, most markedly the southern border and immigration, but also including the economy, foreign policy, and law and order and public security.
I hope he is right.
Given the way that Conrad Black was railroaded by the System — it was relentless until it got him right where it wanted, he of all people should know that they don’t and won’t give up easily.
Still, he’s been right about more things in life than I have, so there’s that.
It’s been a question on my mind for some time: how is a legislature supposed to operate effectively in an era of such rapid change? Our system of government was built to operate slowly and (in various senses) deliberately. I think that it’s really not capable of reacting to social and technological change with the necessary speed. But what is the replacement method supposed to be? AI? Monarchy? It’s agonizing.
@Philip Sells:
What we got ain’t working. Won’t work. Can’t work. Not designed for the people we are now, let alone the technology we have now.
Out on the Dissident Right, Monarchy (with its own set of failure modes) seems to be it. The more cerebral ones like Curtis Yarvin have been thinking about how to leverage technological momentum as part of this, judo throw style. There are also plenty of Conans who think that the Unabomber wasn’t entirely wrong on all points.
Won’t know one way or the other until long after all of us here are gone from the scene.
Are you familiar with the Culture science fiction novels of the late Iain M Banks? He was your typical nasty Scottish leftist (but I repeat myself). In his imaginary universe, AIs were essentially Gods and humanity were their pets. Since this allowed limitless license and extreme violence around the civilizational edges, you might imagine that this was crack for him. Still, entertaining and imaginative fiction if one skims over some evidence of a very nasty cruel streak in the man. I found it interesting that a Progressive had to reinvent the Gods in order to bash the Universe into a form he could enjoy. It all involved essentially ‘free’ matter and energy, too — an important part of any Leftist’s arsenal 😀
Mike K- To see that Conrad Black is likely correct, one must see around the miasma inducing Fake polling that increasingly abounds.
It used to be in recent years that Pew and Harris were reliable, in addition to Gold standard Gallup and Rasmussen.
No more. Pew and Harris/Harvard, among others, are not.
You need to know who’s oversampling the Left, at the minimum. Internal data breakdowns should reveal this data.
And if they don’t release it, and if the party ID breakdown‘s don’t reflect, for example, the huge Pubbie bump in voter self-identifications in 2020 (because of Trump), and also reflect increased R voter registrations that were measured last year, then that particular poll can be dismissed.
Always remember why the Left was so shocked by the 2016 election outcome: they all Believed their own propaganda polling. No need to do likewise
}}} Biden has signed only 11 bills into law during his first 100 days.
TRUE… but those bills have spent 347 trillion dollars.
😛
(YES: Hyperbole for effect…. but not enough hyperbole and too much reality)
Speaking of King Joe, has anyone noticed the weird television ads touting his first 100 days and all his alleged triumphs? I don’t ever recall a president running what are in effect campaign ads AFTER Election Day. The ads have an unsettling “Dear Leader” vibe; all that’s missing is the children’s chorus. Like everything connected with Biden–from “I’ve got hairy legs” to his touchy-feely ways–there is an air of Creep about them.
It’s been a question on my mind for some time: how is a legislature supposed to operate effectively in an era of such rapid change?
By having sensible parliamentary procedure and an array of committees which correspond to each of the different components of the bureaucracy and to each of the different components of U.S. Code. We don’t have that because Congress is all about protecting each influential member’s quantum of turf (i.e. his opportunity for graft). It would help also if our legislators were not bags of manure. Kakistocracy is now.
One thing I read from time to time is that the Republican floor leaders (who are useless human beings six-ways-to-Sunday) are admired by members because they’re vigorous fundraisers. We have this institution called the Republican National Committee, which has a three digit staff. Why are our parliamentary floor leaders devoting their time to running fundraisers in any constituency but their own?
Laws are just wordswhich derive their power from a people who believe in them and people who suffer shame and guilt from repudiating them. But laws are just words, and if they are not obeyed, exile, imprisonment, and death are the only options. So who will rid US of this unprincipled politician?
The consequences of action and inaction appear to be the same.
“With money, everything is easy” Dad, 1982
“With lying, everything is easy” Joe Biden, now