The Executive Order

"Stroke of the pen, law of the land -- kinda cool"  Paul Begala

“ Teddy Roosevelt -- as obnoxious and authoritarian a personality as ever occupied 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue -- issued more than 1,000 EOs, including one setting aside 16 million acres of public land just before Congress restricted his authority to do so, and another pushing a trendy "Simplified Spelling" scheme, wherein "kissed" would read "kist"; "enough," "enuf," etc. (Luckily, Congress beat back TR's attempt to assert presidential dominion over the English language.)

During the Clinton occupation I spent a lot of time trying to understand the Executive Order.  The idea that the president of this democratic republic of ours can legislate by fiat is just so .. so counterintuitively preposterous.  I mean, he's not a federal judge </snark>.  What I do remember from that research is that what one expert said over here was countermanded by that expert over there; sort of like dealing with the IRS.  A detail that stuck, for some reason, is Texas democrat Henry B. Gonzalez saying that the EO,  in the hands of an unscrupulous president, could represent a threat to the nation.  You owe it to yourself to read this article by Examiner columnist Gene Healy:  Congress should 'shellack' president's executive orders.   [Sample] “ After last Tuesday's "shellacking," it's a fair bet President Obama will find rule by decree kinda cool as well. A recent report from the American Prospect argues "President Obama's own executive power is a key to creating jobs at higher wages," and he should reshape federal contracting to promote unionization and the "living wage." Such ideas likely sound increasingly appealing to the embattled president. Even when his party controlled Congress, Obama relished the chance to proclaim "make it so!" such as summarily firing GM's CEO, handing Chrysler over to the United Auto Workers, and, without any legal authority, strong-arming BP into putting $20 billion in escrow. What Gonzalez was talking about.