> Cam wrote: > Very alarmist indeed. > The Militaty falls under the Executive Branch. The president is the > Commander in Chief of the miitary.
But he does not have the power to declare war nor the power of the purse. The President is not a king - he cannot take the country to battle without prior congressional approval nor can he fund it. The point you're missing (big time) is that if a President were to draft a sufficiently vague document requesting approval to use the military in, say, a "war on terror', which is ill defined he could then effectively remove the check on his power. He could use fears of security to do just such a thing. If he did, now he would not only be able to take the country to war, but define that war as anything he liked. > > The president has not only the power, but the responsibility to > appoint judges during term in office. Again, you miss the point about removing an essential check. If the President and Congress collude with judges, either formally or informally, to support a specific ideology, then the judicial check has effectively been removed. > It's funny to see people going "Oh no! The president is using the > powers we gave him by electing him!" Then you fail to understand the argument because that's certainly not what this piece is saying. It's saying that the ability exists to remove essential checks and balances to protect the people from the government and that's there's great historical precedent for this. The great illusion of some Americans seems to be that if there's been elections then that must mean nothing bad can happen. Seen Chavez lately? It's not as if one day there's an election between gov't tyranny and not! It's a slow gradual thing usually based on, "if only I had more power then I could really protect you ..." And that's George Bush's motto these days. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Introducing the Fusion Authority Quarterly Update. 80 pages of hard-hitting, up-to-date ColdFusion information by your peers, delivered to your door four times a year. http://www.fusionauthority.com/quarterly Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:214196 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
