As long as the Constitution stands —

In the Constitution — Article I lays out the role of Congress and Article II lays out the role of the President, not the other way around.  Thus Congress has a great deal of power to lead right now, if Senators and Members would only exercise their governing rights under the Constitution.  But for too long we have vested far too much power in in our Presidents.  And we are wanting to vest more power in the hands of our President-elect right now than he can have.  He, like all of us, is bound by Constitutional processes, and he understands them full well, having taught Constituional law for several years himself.

The Constitution specifies in whom are vested the various powers, the dilemma being lived out during this crisis laden period of transition: Likewise, the Constitution has been amended 23 times, but nowhere does it specify that the President can check out early and turn governance over to the President-elect.  President Bush has the responsibility to serve for another 57 days.

The Presidential Oath or Affirmation is written in the document under which we all operate.  When President-elect Barack Obama becomes the actual President in January 2009, he will stand in front of the nation and say,

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

The Constitution specifies both rights and responsibilities – The peoples’ basic rights as citizens are laid out in the Bill of Rights, the first ten Constitutional amendments.  Amendment X specifies:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

The role of the judicial branch of our government is laid out in Article III of the Constitution.  All of us are bound to live under the rule of law.  That includes our public officials.  Most recently it even included Senator Ted Stevens, who had represented Alaska for decades.  Under the law his name stayed on the ballot, but his constituents (the people) defeated him at the ballot box.

As long as the Constitution stands we are bound by the rule of law.  All three branches of government must share equally the responsibility to make things work, however, on behalf of we the people.  Congress makes the law and exercises oversight (as representatives of the people) over the other two co-equal branches of government. The President executes the laws passed by Congress and as adjudicated by the courts.  Congress and the courts may be asked in the future to hold up the current administration to the scrutiny of the rule of law.  And it is not the responsibility of the executive branch to prosecute those who have broken the law, except through the Justice Department, acting as the peoples’ lawyers.  We must remember and trust the process.  Thus we must wait to see what happens.  We must remind or remove officials as needed at the end of their terms, or by demanding impeachment.

Sphere: Related Content

Pessimistic, realistic, or optimistic about new leadership?

There is nothing like a world-wide economic crisis to galvanize America’s attention, this last full week of campaigning before the presidential election. I have wondered whether it is “the beginning of another 1929#.”  With Wall Street — and the world — in meltdown, our next president will come into one of the most difficult situations in several decades.  Two wars, a weak congress, soaring deficits, and a leftover imperial presidency are just a few of the huge issues he will have to face. Even President Bush said a couple of weeks ago that there is a lot of work to do to help his successor.  He has set up a transition team in his final 100 days.

The two candidates’ campaigns are good auditions for leadership at which voters might look as they choose our next leader. A lot of good people are thinking and writing optimistically about the leadership issue. Writing in Politico.com (10/27/08), John Podesta, whom I predict will have an important role in an Obama administration, left an open message with a good, simple leadership plan for the next president, “44: Prosperity,” on today’s Politico.com. In the same issue, Tom Donohue, head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, writes the new president a “booster-ish” message, “Dear 44: A can-do nation.” To quote:

The next few years will present a critical test for our country, our institutions, and our leaders. We have to rediscover the identity of our nation. Do we still have it in us to act big and act boldly when the chips are down?   Do we have the vision and the drive to act before confronted with a crisis? Is America still a can-do country? Can we lan smartly to build for America’s future success? Are we ready, willing and able to lead in this century the way we did in the last?

America will not remain a leader simply because we’ve always been a leader. We have achieved great things, but the world in which we achieved them has fundamentally changed. There are other great societies in the game now. To a large extent, they have us to thank! We told them how to build economies, train their work force and open markets. We put them in the game, and now they are competing against us.

Today, it is the United States that must regain its speed, execution and drive to be the best. We must throw off the cloak of entitlement. We need real leaders in government — leaders who can take a different approach, obtain the facts, formulate a solution, communicate it, sell it, and get it done. And if it doesn’t work, try something else. That’s what business does every day.

. . . After the election, we have another choice to make. Do we lead or do we follow? Do we continue our legacy and build a can-do future based on growth, hard work, entrepreneurship and reward?  Or do we rest on our laurels and continue to sink into the swamp of can’t-do, enjoying small comforts in equitable mediocrity.

What will our next president be leading? According to Time Magazine, in it’s very realistic article, “America: The Lost Leader,” both presidential candidates agree that “the performance of the U.S. in its leadership role has been less impressive of late than it was following World War II. . . you cannot be a leader without followers.”  The article adds that, fundamentally, people just want security. And they want justice, an even older idea than democracy. To quote more extensively:

Now, with the end of the Cold War, and in the messy world that has taken shape in its aftermath, it is time for America to show leadership again. . . The Bush Administration, . . has not been good at multilateralism or institution-building.

.
. . This record of unilateral action and standoffishness has borne bitter fruit in terms of America’s reputation overseas. The polls don’t lie; even among its staunch allies, the U.S is seen as untrustworthy and dangerous.

. . . The American domination — economic, social, cultural, political — that was such a feature of the post-1945 world is missing now. Plainly, there are material aspects of modern American life that still inspire admiration from overseas, and features of American innovation that nobody else can match. . .

Beyond anything else, though, it is the shift of the world’s economic center of gravity from the Atlantic to the Pacific that has changed the environment. . . It is that sense of pride — quite palpable throughout Asia today — that provides the demand for respect, for influence, for
the nations that have achieved such economic success to receive their just deserts. . . But though modern Chinese will often ask for understanding, they will always ask for respect. They think they’ve earned it. And they’re right. This self-confidence of modern China, and other Asian societies, too, has had profound implications.

. . .
The end of America’s monopoly on modernity, coupled with the pride that other nations and cultures take in their own versions of modernity, has changed the game. What the U.S. faces in the world now is not a crisis of leadership so much as one of followership. . . the conditions which created leadership and followership in the post-1945 world are gone, and they’re not coming back.

. . . America [could be] one that does not claim a monopoly of wisdom; one that recognizes that the world has changed; one that does not argue that simply because America was founded on a great idea 232 years ago, it has a moral superiority over everyone else today — is an America to which others would listen. We will soon know if such an America is taking shape.

Many, many others have a more pessimistic view. As an example, this cautionary note comes from Survival Acres (10/26/08) titled, “Olduvai Theory And Our Response*.” To quote:

Unless a massive energy source is found and developed, industrial civilization will collapse in upon itself, leaving behind a unbelievable garbage dump of useless artifacts spread across the entire globe. . . The “answer” to all of this has always remained the same. Humans must
embrace a new ethic and a new level of existence if they are to survive much longer on this planet.

Pessimism, realism or optimism — I am optimistic that Barack Obama sees the world relatively realistically, despite his emphasis on hope. After all, his main message is “change,” which would not be needed if our leadership had been adequate these past few years. It will take a young, energetic,
smart and inspirational leader to finally get us back on an appropriate 21st century track. McCain does not qualify, in my opinion.

Hat Tip Key: Regular contributors of links to leads are “betmo*” and Jon#.

(Cross-posted at The Reaction.)

My “creativity and dreaming” post today is at Making Good Mondays.

Technorati tags: news news and politics politics 2008 election leadership obama bushglobal economy

Sphere: Related Content

Exploring Rights and Wrongs

Knowing the difference between right and wrong . . . is at times a murky business. It is not always easy to see what is beneath the surface.

Fallout the so-called “war on terror” — Telecommunications companies achieved immunity from lawsuits in the latest Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act revision. And insurance companies are exploiting terrorism fears as they set museum insurance rates. These items from my CQ Behind the Lines free e-mail newsletter, by David C. Morrison, of 8/15/08:

State and local: . . Vermont’s two-year investigation into allegations that telecoms released customer data to NSA snoops appears to be drawing to a close, The Barre Times Argus tells.

Kulture Kanyon: . . Since terror fears spiked seven years ago, insurance hikes have “threatened to strangle museums’ ability to present important art to the public,” a curator tells the L.A. Times‘ Mike Boehm

“This is so wrong,” – is the headline about this item from the NYT in, “Police State USA” at Yes, I take it personally. “betmo’s” link* describes how a man got caught up in an immigration sweep, was shuttled from facility to facility, and then died due to failure to receive even minimal medical care. The map at this site is also very revealing. To quote:

. . . fifteen years of an exemplary life in the U.S. only to get thrown into a detention center. . . detention watch network has put together this handy map…

Hate speech is flat wrong – Conservatives have long called for the heads of prominent liberals. Looks like they got their wish. This story came from my friend Jon. It was posted by Steven D. at AlterNet, and titled, “The Tragic Arkansas Shooting and Conservative Hate Speech,” taken from the Booman Tribune, August 14, 2008. To quote:

. . . there was no personal connection between the shooter and Bill Gwatney, and apparently there wasn’t one. Instead, there are some initial eerie similarities between the shooter Timothy Dale Johnson, and the man who massacred members of the Unitarian church in Knoxville, Tennessee last month. Both, for example had just lost their jobs, and both were very, very angry about that fact

. . . It’s past time for members of the the right wing wurlitzer to apologize for their hate speech and to renounce any further use of the language of extermination with respect to their political, religious and ideological adversaries, as well as their demonization of minorities.

Stealing the words of another to use as one’s own is wrong. Jody Rosen posted an article* “Dude, You Stole My Article” — How I investigated a suspicious alt weekly — at Slate Magazine on Aug. 6, 2008, about someone at a Texas newspaper, The Bulletin, who plagiarized an article about Jimmy Buffett.
What is wrong with this picture, if anything? This item* came from World Changing: “Virtual Transgender Suit, Avatar Termination and Other Online World Tales,” by Regine Debatty, August 15, 2008. To quote:

You might remember that a year ago Marc Owens designed the Avatar Machine, a system which replicates the aesthetics and visuals of third person gaming, allowing the user to view themselves as a virtual character in real space via a head mounted interface.

. . . A study by psychologists at Nottingham Trent University has found that 54 percent of all males and 68 percent of all females “gender swap”–or create online personas of their opposite sex.

. . . Another of Owens’ projects, Sabre & Mace - Second Death, was concerned more specifically with the online environment Second Life.Collaborating with Tony Mullin, he created SABRE & MACE, a company that offers virtual characters the opportunity to experience death as a way to close their user account permanently. The project examines the notion of feeling sentimental toward a virtual character and examines the link between sentimentality and tangibility.

The ability to become invisible likely would never be allowed by our government’s security apparatus. Homeland Security, the Justice Department, the FBI, the National Security Agency and many other government entities all want their full range of rights to search for terrorists and other suspicious people. This intriguing little blurb* is from The Raw Story, “Invisibility Cloak Now Within Sight: Scientists,” 8/11/08. To quote,

The age-old fantasy of making yourself invisible has taken a step toward reality, with scientists saying they have created three-dimensional materials that can bend visible light.

*Thanks for these links from “betmo,” who writes life’s journey.

(Cross-posted at The Reaction.)

My “creativity and dreaming” post today is at Making Good Mondays.

Technorati tags: news national intelligence ethics and morals domestic surveillance terrorism opinion

Sphere: Related Content

Kucinich reads his articles of Impeachment

Thanks to C&L for the video. Thank Kucinich here.

Bet this just jacked the hell out of Pelosi.

Sphere: Related Content

The Libertarian View of Abortion

I got such a great response to my post from last week: You Can Have My Womb When You Rip It From My Cold, Dead Body, that I wanted to post the opinion of another Libertarian blogger.

Please welcome, The Mudslinger, who is a true and personal friend of mine and my family (politically and personally, speaking).

For Libertarians on Abortion
(Re-posted with permission from Muddy Thoughts)

Read more

Sphere: Related Content

what’s wrong with us?

that was a question asked by a reader of mine over at life’s journey. i posted on how the kenyans mobilized and kept in contact with each other during this time of turmoil and whatnot. it is a fine, fine question. i have pondered over it until it depresses me. there are lots of folks out there who are mobilized and fighting for a good end- but we don’t all agree on that end result. for example, i am a kucinich supporter and i have been rallying around the kucinich campaign almost since day 1. i feel he would be a step in the right direction- but the obama supporters are working just as hard to get him elected. folks mobilized for a common good- but, well, you get the idea. not everyone shares my view that we need to shut this country down and take it back by force of numbers in order to get some accountability and movement away from the corruption. and they are probably right. the corruption cuts deep- in every layer of our ‘way of life’. we would have to shut things down indefinitely to sort this all out- and in the end- we would still have our forests cut down, our infrastructures crumbling and our tax money evaporating in the ether. why?

Read more

Sphere: Related Content