Tag Archives: government

Justice Kennedy Testified

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Justice Anthony Kennedy testified a little bit ago before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government regarding the Supreme Court’s budget request. In the course of that, Congressman Ander Crenshaw (R, FL), the subcommittee’s chairman, asked Kennedy about Congressional gridlock. Kennedy answered,

And we think an efficient, responsive legislation and executive branch in the political system will alleviate some of that pressure. We routinely decide cases involving federal statutes and we say, well, if this is wrong the Congress will fix it.

But then we hear that Congress can’t pass a bill one way or the other. That there is gridlock.

Some people say that should affect the way we interpret the statutes. That seems to me a wrong proposition. We have to assume that we have three fully functioning branches of the government, government that are committed to proceed in good faith and with good will toward one another to resolve the problems of this republic.

I think, though, that Kennedy is missing part of the point (keeping in mind that the C-SPAN clip is an excerpt, but this particular answer is presented in its entirety). Federal statutes, under our Constitution, are political matters to be determined solely by We the People through our elected representatives in the Congress (with veto or signing input from our elected President). The Judiciary, that third fully functioning branch of the government under our Constitution, can only decide the legitimacy—the Constitutionality—of a Federal statute and, on finding it legitimate, can only apply that statute as it is written.

There is nothing in our Constitution that authorizes the Judiciary to do any part of law making in the event of gridlock. Gridlock is a political matter, not a judicial one, it’s an occasional outcome of the checks and balances built into our government by our Constitution, and it’s there on purpose: that would be the “check” part. The courts are in no way authorized to fill that void with their own view of what the law (or a law) ought to be. There is, in fact, no void to be filled.

It would have been good had Kennedy given a more complete answer.

Obama Makes it Official

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Laws don’t apply to him or his White House.

The White House, in a curiously timed move, is stripping a federal regulation that made a particular office subject to reporters’ records requests.

The rule change means the Freedom of Information Act will no longer apply to the White House Office of Administration. In turn, the policy will allow the Obama White House to reject records requests for that office, just as the last Bush White House did.

There’s that Democratic Morality, again. Someone else did it, therefor it’s OK to do it again.

And, just to drive the point home that Obama holds himself above the law, all it takes being a stroke of that pen of his:

In the notice to be published Tuesday, the White House said it was not allowing a 30-day public comment period, and so the rule will be final.

Clinton’s Emails

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Ex-First Lady, one-time Senator, and woman who once sat in the Secretary of State’s chair had a press conference.

QUESTION: How could the public be assured that when you deleted emails that were personal in nature, that you didn’t also delete emails that were professional, but possibly unflattering?

And what do you think about this Republican idea of having an independent third party come in and examine your emails?

CLINTON: Well first of all, you have to ask that question to every single federal employee, because the way the system works, the federal employee, the individual, whether they have one device, two devices, three devices, how many addresses, they make the decision.

So, even if you have a work-related device with a work-related .gov account, you choose what goes on that.

In the first place, Madam, no, we don’t have to ask every single federal employee; we are, though, asking you. In the second place, even if every single federal employee made that error of judgment, it wouldn’t excuse yours. I notice, too, that you didn’t answer the question about how the public can be sure you didn’t also delete….

Nor is it lost on any of us that you ignored the second part of that question, too. Should we conclude, then, that you don’t want an independent evaluation?

Then there’s the apparent evidence tampering and the apparent violation of the Federal Records Act:

QUESTION: Did you or any of your aides delete any government-related emails from your personal account? And what lengths are you willing to go to to prove that you didn’t?

Some people, including supporters of yours, have suggested having an independent arbiter look at your server, for instance.

CLINTON: … I have no doubt that we have done exactly what we should have done. When the search was conducted, we were asking that any email be identified and preserved that could potentially be federal records, and that’s exactly what we did.

[T]he process produced over 30,000 you know, work emails, and I think that we have more than met the requests from the State Department. The server contains personal communications from my husband and me, and I believe I have met all of my responsibilities and the server will remain private….

It’s a much longer-winded obfuscatory answer; I’ve excerpted here. But notice: she never did get around to answering the question of deletion and how anyone would know. She did, though, say that the server she used to conduct government business will remain private, and she was clear that she and her people were the ones who determined the work relevance of what she kept and what she deleted. She also continued to elide the question of an independent evaluator’s judgment.

Finally, a small aside: 30,000 work emails works out to about 20 emails per day over her four-year tour—an unbelievably small amount of email traffic for a SecState.

Keep this in mind during the Primary Season, and if she passes through it, in the fall of 2016.

Crony Capitalism

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Corporate fascism is, at its core, government management of each of the several economic sectors in a nation’s economy—agricultural, manufacturing, technology, communications, transportation, and so on. This management is executed by government through otherwise privately controlled business entities. De facto corporatism also is useful for reducing opposition and rewarding political loyalty.

Crony capitalism, on the other hand, is government influence of individual businesses in a nation’s economy—agribusinesses, automobile companies, alternative energy companies, telecommunications companies, and so on. Crony capitalism also is useful for reducing opposition and rewarding political loyalty.

How is crony capitalism different from corporate fascism? So far, the individual cronies can choose whether or not to play according to their government benefactors’ rules. So far.

An Open Letter

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Senator Tom Cotton (R, AR) is the lead signatory, among 47 Republican Senators, to an open letter to the Iranian government regarding how the American government works.

An Open Letter to the Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran:

It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system. Thus, we are writing to bring to your attention two features of our Constitution-the power to make binding international agreements and the different character of federal offices-which you should seriously consider as negotiations progress.

First, under our Constitution, while the president negotiates international agreements, Congress plays the significant role of ratifying them. In the case of a treaty, the Senate must ratify it by a two-thirds vote. A so-called congressional-executive agreement requires a majority vote in both the House and the Senate (which, because of procedural rules, effectively means a three-fifths vote in the Senate). Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement.

Second, the offices of our Constitution have different characteristics. For example, the president may serve only two 4-year terms, whereas senators may serve an unlimited number of 6-year terms. As applied today, for instance, President Obama will leave office in January 2017, while most of us will remain in office well beyond then-perhaps decades.

What these two constitutional provisions mean is that we will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei. The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.

We hope this letter enriches your knowledge of our constitutional system and promotes mutual understanding and clarity as nuclear negotiations progress.

Unfortunately, the letter isn’t only addressed to the Iranians, it’s also, of necessity, aimed at President Barack Obama.

The letter can be seen here and here.