The Revolution

On the forty-second page of “The Revolution: A Manifesto” Represenative and presidential candidate Ron Paul wrote (emphasis added):

One mechanism that has strengthened it is the executive order, an instrument by which presidents have exerted powers that our Constitution never intended them to have. An executive order is a command issued by the president that enjoys his authority alone, not having been passed by Congress. Executive orders can have legitimate functions. Presidents cancarry out their constitutional duties or direct their subordinates by executive order, for instance. But they can also be a source of temptation for ambitious presidents (am I being redundant?), since they can always try to get away with using them as a substitute for formal legislation that they know they cannot get to pass. He can therby circumvent the normal, constitutional legislative process.

Executive orders were rare in the nineteenth century; for a president to issue even several dozen was unusual. The first twentieth-century president to serve a full term, Theodore Roosevelt (who served two, in fact), issued over a thousand. Executive orders continue to serve as a potent weapon in the president's arsenal.

Congress has sometimes been complicit in presidential abuses of executive orders, either by giving express sanction to the president's action after the fact or ignoring the abuse of power altogether. This latter course is sometimes pursued when congressmen happen to favor the president's course of action but do not want to have to associate themselves with it (perhaps because it is controversial or politically sensitive). With executive orders, presidents can commit our troops to undeclared wars, destroy industries, or make unprecedented social-policy changes. And they remain unaccountable because often these actions occur behind the door of the Oval Office, are distributed without notice, and then executed in

More information about “The Revolution: A Manifesto” (and the book itself) is available from:

• Amazon.com
• Barnes & Noble
• Powell's Books

(Grand Central Publishing, April 2008. Hardcover, 173 pages. ISBN: 0446537519; EAN: 9780446537513.)

Comments

[moncler outlet]

If winter comes , can spring be far behind ?