I really like this idea, for a number of reasons. What do you think?



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Does Congress not see that they are gradually being marginalized, their power taken and amassed within the executive branch via "czars"?

The whole concept of "czars," presidential appointees that are not under congressional authority but report solely to the president, needs to end. I realize it's been done before, for years actually, but never on the scale of what Obama has done. At last count he now has over 30 "czars," many of whom are duplicating (and likely replacing from a practical standpoint) official cabinet positions. Others are entirely new positions with new and far-reaching power, power not granted to them by Congress and not approved by Congress.

There is no vetting process (at least not one open to scrutiny by Congress or we the people) and no accountability other than to the president. Transparency anyone?

It's a blatant circumvention of the constitutional separation of powers and it needs to stop. To me, it appears to be not only unconstitutional but a clear attempt to consolidate power in the executive branch while marginalizing the power of Congress. As Senator Byrd said in a recent letter to Obama, "The accumulation of power by White House staff can threaten the Constitutional system of checks and balances." Indeed.

Perhaps some in Congress are waking up to what's happening.

Taxpayers for Common Sense has a running list of the czars with additional detail on each one.

Here's the current list:

1. Afghanistan czar
2. AIDS czar
3. Border czar
4. CA Water czar
5. Car czar
6. Climate czar
7. Domestic violence czar
8. Drug czar
9. Economic czar
10. Energy czar
11. Faith-based czar
12. Great Lakes czar
13. Green jobs czar
14. Guantanamo closure czar
15. Health czar
16. Information czar
17. Intelligence czar
18. Mideast peace czar
19. Mideast policy czar
20. Pay czar
21. Regulatory czar
22. Science czar
23. Stimulus accountability czar
24. Sudan czar
25. TARP czar
26. TARP oversight czar
27. Technology czar
28. Terrorism czar (umm, shouldn't that be the man-caused disaster czar?)
29. Urban affairs czar
30. Weapons czar
31. WMD/Terrorism czar

and two not appointed yet:

32. Copyright czar
33. Cyberspace czar

33 and counting...

Well, at least it does in Honduras. What the state-run media is calling a "military coup" was actually the arrest of their president for violating their Constitution, after attempts to get him to comply with the Constitution failed. It was carried out on orders from the Supreme Court after the Congress intervened.

What I can't figure out is why Obama is joining with the likes of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro to side with the ousted would-be dictator.

Aside from the obvious question as to why the president of the United States of America wouldn't defend another country's right to uphold its own Constitution (oh yeah, he doesn't respect ours either), wasn't it just last week that he was telling us we have to be uber-careful to not be seen as meddling in the affairs of other countries? He turned a blind eye to the plight of Iranian citizens who wanted nothing more than freedom and integrity in their elections and took something like two weeks to make a statement (rather tepidly IMO) against the violence perpetrated on the people by their own government. Yet he wasted no time in rushing to the defense of a man who was removed from office for illegal activity.

Back to my original point about the rule of law... while I'm pleased to see Hondurans standing up for their Constitution, I can't help but wonder about the rule of law in our own country.

We have a president who continually violates the law and the Constitution whenever it suits him, a media that by and large refuses to call him on it, and so far the Supreme Court hasn't really weighed in. The rule of law has been replaced by the rule of "empathy" (isn't justice supposed to be blind?), or the rule of "I won" (so therefore I can do whatever I want and you can't stop me).

The Chrysler and GM deals are one example. Bankruptcy law calls for the secured creditors to be paid first, before unsecured creditors. Yet Obama inserted himself into the proceedings and forced the secured creditors to take a backseat to the unions, who were unsecured creditors. Some bondholders took their case to the Supreme Court but SCOTUS declined to even hear the case.

The administration (via the Car Czar's office) had involvement in the closings of dealerships, in which they actually took businesses from families that had owned them for generations, with no compensation, and gifted them to competing dealers (many of whom just happened to be Democrat donors).

And speaking of czars, I've lost count of how many we have now. It's unconstitutional to have unelected government officials circumventing Congress and answerable only to the president. There have been such positions under other presidents, but not nearly so many and not with the scope of power that Obama is conferring on them. It makes a mockery of the separation of powers established in our Constitution, and it needs to stop.

You'd think that Obama might at least follow the laws that he himself co-sponsored, right? Not so much. Last year, he co-sponsored a bill that was passed to protect the independence of Inspectors General, which required that IG's could not be fired without 30 days notice and an explanation to Congress of the reasons. Yet after Gerald Walpin reported his findings of abuse of taxpayer money by Sacramento mayor Johnson, the White House gave him one hour to resign or be fired, offering no explanation. It just so happens that Mr. Johnson is an Obama supporter / crony. After an uproar over this illegal firing of someone charged with protecting taxpayer funds, the White House attempted to besmirch Walpin's reputation by claiming he was "confused and disoriented" and basically unfit. I've seen interviews he's done, he's anything but. It would seem that it's the White House that is confused. It looks like the Senate is trying to look into this, and that's good.

It makes me very nervous to see a president so arrogantly disregard the law on a whim, and especially since many of the cases appear to involve either payoffs to or protection of supporters / donors / special interests. Cronyism and corruption should not be tolerated, and I hope that the administration will take greater care in the future to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, and that Congress and SCOTUS will step in as needed. The confidence of the American people in our government and our laws is at stake.

Thanks to @WomenGunOwners for sharing this.

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