printPray tell when have the “two other branches” that are supposed to check the presidency, ever done anything but collude with the executive?
One gets the impression that Jonathan Turley, Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, thinks that “the expansion of executive power,” to which he has once again testified on Capitol Hill, was a feature of the Barack Obama presidency only.
Turley did, however, clarify that “this problem didn’t begin with President Obama,” and that he “was critical of his predecessor President Bush as well,” although “the rate at which executive power has been concentrated in our system is accelerating.”
“Frankly,” warned Turley, “I am very alarmed by the implications of that aggregation of power.”
Turley is also irked by the fact that “the two other branches appear not just simply passive, but inert in the face of this concentration of authority.”
But when have Congress and the judiciary ever done what the Founding Fathers promised the constitutional scheme would compel them to do?
The truth is that the Constitution gave us three branches of colluding quislings. It was in the cards.
UPDATE: Should the Federal Constitution be ratified, there would be “no checks, no real balances,” thundered Anti-Federalist Patrick Henry.