Unitary Executive: Agree or Disagree

Definition here, if you need it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory

Win The Future or What The Fuck. They are eerily similar.

Or maybe single payer?

Or an executive order repealing DADT?

... so on?

I'm surprised you aren't getting higher support for Unitary Executive in this poll.

Making people face their alternative egos is cruel.

+1

The fact that he is not, makes them angry.

...if he were they'd complain. I take a lot more ibuprofen lately.

to mocking the endless stream of "Obama bad" threads.

I call it the "manufactured outrage machine" ... every day, the product of the outrage machine is UP, regardless of what Obama does or says.

If these folks spent half as much time trying to knock the GOP down, the left would be so much farther forward.

But no, better to fight "us", discourage all Dems, and then wonder why the GOP wins the election.

It's odd to me that they don't see the damage they do to their own cause by tearing down the left. But, I have Republican friends that vote against their own best interest all the time. I guess I shouldn't expect any more from our side.

My view is that we on the left are like yippy dogs.

We form a circle and bark at the bone sitting in front of us. We could just take the bone. But no we have to bark at it, and at each other, running in circles as we do so.

Meanwhile, the GOP pit bulls, they sit over on the side drooling. They wait for us to exhaust each other. So that we become discouraged, and give up.

Then the GOP pit bulls calmly walk over and take the bone. And laugh in our faces as they do so.

For me, that's the 2010 election explained.

...because the offensive line sucks. All these analogies and just one friggin' hope. That we don't all commit political suicide and get one of the GOOPers as president.

I actually had a conversation the other day with a fellow Dem about which Republican (possible) candidate wouldn't make us move to Canada. We eventually both gave up and started complaining about how cold it is in Canada.

I love to visit Canada, but it is way to freaking cold there.

That's why we have to stop the silly bickering on the left and FOCUS on stopping the insane GOP. I want to stay in NC (I'm originally from Philly), where it is warm, but where we might get just enough snow each year so they kids can make a 3-4 foot tall snow man.

Let's take GITMO.

Many on DU are PISSED that Obama has not acted like a UNITARY EXECUTIVE and closed it.

And that's just one example. Public option and DADT were others.

Folks on DU don't want a unitary executive, except when they want one.

What he needs is the funding to do it.

He is Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces (he controls the military prisons) and the Attorney General serves at his pleasure (he controls the civilian prisons).

That being said, even the most extreme proponents of unitary executive theory would not argue that the President has the power of the purse. Congress is well within their right to cut off any funding for transferring the prisoners and I believe they voted to do just that by an overwhelming margin.

I just don't believe in signing statements and unilateral action the way bush did it.

As is anyone who applies this garbage theory to break the law.

First, I have read some documents that shed a light on the thinking of the founding fathers, including but not limited to The Federalist Papers (all of them), and I have a B.S. in history, and a JD. That does not make me a constitutional scholar, but it gives me some background.

The Federalist Papers defended a strong executive on the theory that a strong executive was necessary to prevent chaos--on the other hand the founders never envisioned a large federal executive doing so many things under the absolute control and discretion of one person. That can equate to tyranny which the founders saw themselves as resolutely opposing.

This might be used to argue that the founders intended smaller government, which would literally be true. However the founders did not anticipate the many challenges that would be presented to the government, many of them now being presented by big business beyond anything the founders could have conceived. The founders were split of the value of corporations, for instance, some of them believing that they were essential to the functioning of a viable nation, and some of them (similarly to Adam Smith) believing that the special privileges granted by a corporate charter were anathema to liberty. But that is a topic for a separate discussion, and is off point.

The founders clearly believed, however, that the executive, however powerful, was to be bound by Constitution and laws of the United States. They could and would not have supported a large executive branch filled with yes-men who believed that whatever the President said was law. They did support somewhat stronger executive powers in dealing with international than domestic affairs, but even so they believed that the President was to be bound by the laws in international matters too, and that Congress was to be consulted whenever possible, and that only the Congress had the power to declare war, or to appropriate money to carry out the functions of the executive either foreign or domestic.

This would mean that any executive officer would have an obligation to follow the law, and to attempt to assist the President in following the law. By logical implication this means to attempt to prevent the President from breaking the law.

This does not, of course, present a clear and simplistic answer. There is no clear and simplistic answer that is at the same time informed and honest.

Therefore "other" is the only appropriate response to such a poll.

Actually, on reconsideration, "WTF" would also be an appropriate response.

The President has complete control over the various departments and the Executive Office of the President. Independent agencies are not under his control.

I presume you're referencing the President's decision to act unilaterally in Libya. War powers are something that have not (and ought to be) clarified by the courts. However, even without he courts clarifying war powers or executive authority at all for that matter, I would note that Congress has an option to reign in the President both on war and pretty much in any case where they don't like the manner in which he is exercising his authority as Chief Executive. All they have to do is cut off funding. Even the most extreme unitary executive proponents believe that Congress controls the purse strings.

But of course, it isn't.

If any of our countrymen wish for a king, give them Aesop's fable...
if this does not cure them, send them to Europe.
- Thomas Jefferson


            Unitary WTF?

Article II, Section 1: "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America."

However, anything that is a legislative-executive hybrid, i.e., every department, is not exclusively executive (by definition). Simply put, the President is the executive regarding any part of our government that is exclusively executive.

That's why I didn't support instituting health care via executive order.