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Add comment June 2nd, 2009

It’s time once again to shoot down the myth of co-equal branches of government

1 comment June 2nd, 2009

 The debate over President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court inevitably is giving rise to lots of talk about our system of three ”co-equal” branches of government.

 (Just moments ago, I heard Republican Sen. Pete Sessions say something along these lines on TV.)

 This gives me another good opportunity to argue against this “co-equal” myth, which I’ve done on several occasions over the past 18 months.

 Yes, the notion that the Constitution created three co-equal branches of government is an article of faith among most Americans.  It’s popularly viewed as the provision that gives us our system of checks and balances. But it’s not true.

 Most of the politicians who play the co-equal card (Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both played it during their campaigns last year) intend to argue against any presumption that the presidency is pre-eminent.

 But the fact is that the Founding Fathers did not create a system of co-equal branches of government. Rather, they intended for the legislative branch to be dominant, as is evidenced in the Federalist Papers and even in some of the arguments against ratification of the Constitution from people who wanted co-equal branches and regretted that they weren’t getting them.

 Historian Garry Wills presents a convincing case against the “co-equal” theory — and against various other popular myths about the Constitution — in his wonderful book “A Necessary Evil,” which was published in 1999.

 More recently, THIS RIGHT-WINGER folded his argument against the “co-equal” theory into an anti-Obama context. Of course, much of what he says is nonsense, but not the part about the branches of government.

 There’s another good argument HERE.

As the non-white vote grows ever larger, the GOP finds itself trapped by its own Southern strategy

Add comment June 2nd, 2009

 I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been greatly fascinated by political demographics.

 And nobody’s better than Nate Silver at serving up such stuff, as we see HERE.

If a little carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is good, a lot of it is better, right? Wrong!

11 comments June 2nd, 2009

If you’re a global-warming denier, don’t watch this video. It’ll only confuse you:

The Howls of a Fading Species

9 comments June 2nd, 2009

Bob Herbert nails it with THIS INDICTMENT of racists who suddenly claim to be concerned about racism.