Cult of the Presidency, Updated: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power
by Gene Healy
Pub. Date: May 2009
Publisher: Cato Institute
Synopsis:
The Bush years have given rise to fears of a resurgent Imperial Presidency, but the problem cannot be solved simply by bringing a new administration to power. Both Left and Right agree on the boundless nature of presidential responsibility. For both sides, it is the president's job to grow the economy, teach our children well, save us from hurricanes, and even to spread democracy abroad. In short, the Imperial Presidency is the price we pay for making the office the focus of our national hopes and dreams. Combining historical scholarship, legal analysis, and cultural commentary, The Cult of the Presidency argues that the presidency needs to be reined in, with its powers checked by Congress and the courts. Only then will we begin to return the presidency to its proper constitutional role.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments....................vii
Introduction....................1
1. Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers....................15
2. "Progress" and the Presidency....................49
3. The Age of the Heroic Presidency....................79
4. Hero Takes a Fall....................105
5. Superman Returns....................137
6. War President....................165
7. Omnipotence and Impotence....................197
8. Why the Worst Get on Top ... and Get Worse....................233
9. Toward Normalcy....................267
Afterword....................299
Notes....................313
Index....................373
NewsMax Magazine
January 2011 Issue
Obama's Power Grab
President Obama and company are an ideological malignant cancer metastasizing in America ("An Arrogant President," November). The Most disturbing realization for voters is that Obama's is becoming dictatorial, with monarchial declarations, edicts and executive orders.
The White House, coupled with the legislative mania of the Democratic-controlled Congress, grabs power over health care, the auto industry, finance and energy, leaving our failing economy and our country steeped in fear, anxiety and uncertainty.
I am afraid this malignant cancer will likely become terminal with a second term
Daniel B. Jeffs
Apple Valley, Calif.
The Washington Examiner
October 18, 2010
End of moratorium designed to help endangered incumbents
Re: "Salazar's sleight of hand on Gulf drilling," Editorial, Oct. 14
The Washington Examiner is correct to be skeptical over the measured lifting of the Gulf drilling ban shortly before the November elections. The political caveats against actual drilling and production are overwhelming.
This is simply a deceitful campaign gesture by the Obama administration to help fellow Democrats, primarily threatened incumbents. New regulations will be so onerous that they will inhibit most, if not all, offshore oil drilling, even in shallow waters.
The marching orders for Interior Secretary Ken Salazar are painfully clear: Halt and/or endlessly delay permits for exploration, drilling and production of oil, natural gas, and coal while you march ahead with any and all green energy projects no matter what they cost.
THE ROOTS OF OBAMA'S RAGE
By Dinesh D'Souza
Publisher: Regnery Publishing, Inc., An Eagle Publishing Company
September 2010
Synopsis
YOU WILL NEVER SEE OBAMA THE SAME WAY AGAIN
He's been called many things: a socialist, a radical fellow traveler, a Chicago machine politician, a prince of the civil rights movement, a virtual second coming of Christ, or even a covert Muslim.
But as New York Timesbestselling author Dinesh D'Souza points out in this shockingly revealing book, these labels merely slap our own preconceived notions on Barack Obama.
The real Obama is a man shaped by experiences far different from those of most Americans; he is a much stranger, more determined, and exponentially more dangerous man than you'd ever imagined. He is not motivated by the civil rights struggles of African Americans in the 1960s—those battles leave him wholly untouched. He is not motivated by the socialist or Marxist propaganda that hypnotized a whole generation of wooly-minded academics and condescending liberals—those concepts also leave him cold.
What really motivates Barack Obama is an inherited rage—an often masked, but profound rage that comes from his African father; an anti-colonialist rage against Western dominance, and most especially against the wealth and power of the very nation Barack Obama now leads. It is this rage that explains the previously inexplicable, and that gives us a startling look at what might lie ahead. In The Roots of Obama's Rage you'll learn:
• Why Obama's economic policies are actually designed to make America poorer
compared to the rest of the world
• Why Obama will welcome a nuclear Iran
• Why Obama sees America as a rogue nation—worse than North Korea
• The real reason Obama banished a bust of Winston Churchill from the White House and ordered NASA to praise the scientific contributions of Muslims
• Why Obama would like to make America's superpower status a thing of the past
Stunning, provocative, original, and telling—no one has better diagnosed who Obama is, what he intends to do, and why he poses an existential threat to America than Dinesh D'Souza in The Roots of Obama's Rage.
Biography
Dinesh D’Souza is the bestselling author of several books, including What's So Great About America, What's So Great About Christianity, and Life After Death. He has been a White House policy analyst, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. D'Souza lives in Rancho Santa Fe, California, with his wife Dixie and their daughter Danielle.
Newsmax Magazine
September 2010
Gingrich for President
Dick Morris is on the mark ("We Need Gingrich as President in '12," August)! We need Gingrich now more than ever. He has been increasingly the most qualified to be president and one to lead us out of the modern wilderness into a liberated, prosperous future.
Daniel B. Jeffs
Apple Valley, Calif.
Transforming America -- completely -- President Obama's mission to complete FDR's second Bill of Rights
By Daniel B. Jeffs, founder DDC
August 25, 2010
After his policies prolonged the crisis of the Great Depression by nearly a decade, President Franklin D. Roosevelt set America on a course to dependence on government. Using the Declaration of Independence, and a call for a second Bill of Rights toward the end of the crisis of World War II, he began the march to socialism, which was enhanced by President Lyndon B. Johnson and President Jimmy Carter. Now, it is painfully clear that President Barack Obama considers it his personal mission to use our government-caused economic crisis to disregard our Constitution, complete FDR's Second Bill of RIghts -- and more -- to establish the Socialist States of America. The American people simply cannot let that happen. We must not lose our liberty. Indeed, it would be social, political and economic suicide.
Below is an excerpt from President Roosevelt's January 11, 1944 message to the Congress of the United States on the State of the Union. It is prophetically frightening:
It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.
This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.
As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.
The Washington Examiner
August 4, 2010
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/letters/Letters-from-readers-1007037-99888299.html
President Obama should militarize the border Re: "White House provides a back door to amnesty," Aug. 2
Instead of using an executive order to abdicate his duty to protect our southern border from the illegal alien invasion, President Obama should stop intimidating Arizona's attempt at self- defense, militarize the entire border, slam the door and keep it shut. This is a serious matter of national security.
In addition, for the sake of the states and the national debt, all federal aid -- including health care and education for illegal aliens -- should be stopped. In these dire economic times, such aid is simply overwhelming federal and state budgets.
American citizens' message to Obama should be: "Do your job or abdicate your position as president."
Daniel B. Jeffs
Apple Valley, Calif.
The Post American Presidency:
The Obama Administration's War on America
Authors: Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer (Forward by Ambassador John Bolton)
Publisher: Threshold Editions
July 27, 2010
Pamela Geller is the founder of atlasshrugs.com
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/
Editorial Reviews:
“Sheer brilliance! Sharp, well-written and to-the-point. The ultimate patriot's handbook. Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer lay bare Barack Hussein Obama's radical agenda and how to stop it. No true American's library will be complete without this book.”
--Brad Thor, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Foreign Influence
“This book is a chilling analysis of how the policy of President Barack Obama is chipping away at the very foundation of America's leading role in the world. It exposes his philosophy of near universal ‘moral equivalency’: a philosophy that is a dead ringer for the cultural relativism that has been poisoning Europe for the past decades. America is the last man standing and it is vital that the people of Europe adopt the attitude of proud American citizens and learn that it is not shameful to be proud of one’s heritage. This book is incredibly fascinating and at the same time holds a deeply disturbing message we should all take to heart.”
--Geert Wilders, Dutch MP
“Barack Obama is the most radical individual ever to occupy the White House. This excellent book by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer explains exactly what that means and why its implications are fraught with such dangers for this great Republic.”
--David Horowitz, author of Radical Son
“Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer are two of the most incisive analysts of events at home and abroad, and you could not ask for better guides to where ‘hope,’ ‘change’ and czars are taking us – and what Americans can do about it.”
--Mark Steyn, New York Times bestselling author of America Alone
“In The Post-American Presidency, Pamela Geller shines her laser on President Barack Obama – his life, his values, his friends and his perceptions of the country he leads. What she reports will disturb not only every American who believes in that America is the Shining City on the Hill and that the American people are what Abraham Lincoln referred to as ‘the almost chosen people.’ It should also disturb people around the world who recognize that the international system stops working when the American Atlas shirks the burden of its uniqueness.”
--Caroline Glick, author of The Shackled Warrior
“With their characteristic attention to detail, clarity and fearlessness, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer assay the wreckage. The Post-American Presidency is must reading for every concerned American who needs to know why we’re in this perilous moment, and where we’re headed if we don’t take our exceptional country back.”
--Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review legal affairs editor, author of Willful Blindness
SUMMARY:
Popular conservative blogger Pamela Geller and New York Times bestselling author Robert Spencer sound a wake-up call for Americans to stop the Obama administration from limiting our hard-won freedoms, silencing our democratic voices, and irreparably harming America for generations to come.
America is being tested in a way that she has never been tested before. Since taking the oath of office in January 2009, President Barack Obama has cheered our enemies and demoralized our allies. He is hard at work "remaking" America by destroying the free-market system and nationalizing major segments of our economy, demonizing dissent and restricting freedom of speech, turning against our longtime friends, and above all, subjecting us to the determinations of foreign authorities.
In this timely and urgent battle cry, Pamela Geller, founder of the widely popular website www.AtlasShrugs.com, and New York Times bestselling author Robert Spencer team up to expose the Obama administration’s destructive agenda—largely ignored by the mainstream media—and rally Americans to protect the sovereignty of a country that is under siege by the highest levels of its own government. As Americans see their paychecks shrinking every day, Obama ignores our forefathers’ founding principle: individual rights. Instead, he seeks to level the playing field—to transform both the global and national landscape in favor of our enemies—even if it means cutting America off at the knees. He envisions himself as more than just a president of the United States, but as a shaper of the new world order, an internationalist energetically laying the groundwork for global government: the president of the world.
A vital guide to helping conservatives prepare for the tough battles ahead, The Post-American Presidency critically examines the Obama administration’s ominous and revealing moves against our basic freedoms, particularly as he seizes control of the three engines of the American economy: health care, energy, and education. The Shining City on a Hill has gone dark. But America is not dead. The time is NOW to stand up and fight.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/letters/Letters-from-Readers-1003044-99126009.html
The Washington Examiner
July 25, 2010
America is well on the way to bankruptcy Re: "A cure for the federal debt cancer," Editorial, July 19
Former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, who was appointed to co-chair President Obama's fiscal commission, not only said the $13 trillion national debt is like a cancer from within, he declared that if something isn't done to change course, America is headed for bankruptcy.
Most Americans already know that, but what will likely happen after the November elections is that the lame-duck Congress will push through the rest of Obama's spending agenda, which will push America beyond bankruptcy to hyperinflation and economic death.
Liberal policies are taking us from capitalism, to socialism, to social, political and economic cannibalism. They will eat their own, and have the rest us for dessert.
Daniel B. Jeffs
Apple Valley, CA
USA TODAY
July 21. 2010
Letters
Financial reform will lead to more government intrusion
Contrary to USA TODAY’S opinion, the financial reform bill passed last week does little for consumers or economic soundness. Rather, it lays the groundwork for federal meddlers to increase the ranks of regulators and corrosive bureaucracies. Indeed, coupled with increased taxation and the movement toward a takeover of other sectors of the economy such as health care, there won’t be much left in the shrinking arena of individual liberties (“Mindless partisanship mars passage of banking reform,” Editorial, Friday).
Members of Congress who pass these laws — signed by the president — are representing their own interests and agenda, not the people they are supposed to be responsible for and accountable to. Over time, when the federal government morphs into an authoritarian octopus, sustained by tax-and-spend growth hormones, its tentacles will suck the breath of life from a free society.
Clearly, the only reforms necessary to stop the federal monster is to cut its grip on finance, housing, health care, welfare, education, interior, energy and the environment.
Daniel B. Jeffs
Apple Valley, Ca.
Original letter:
Contrary to USA TODAY'S opinion, this financial reform bill does little for consumers or economic soundness. Rather, it lays the groundwork for federal meddlers to increase the ranks of regulators and corrosive bureaucracies -- not so different from the health care plan. Indeed, coupled with commensurate taxation and the takeover of energy and housing, there won't be much left in the shrinking arena of individual liberties.
Those who pass these laws in Congress -- signed by the president -- are representing their own interests and agenda, not the people they are supposed to be responsible for and accountable to. Over time, when the federal government morphs into an authoritarian octopus, sustained by tax and spend growth hormones, its tentacles will suck the breath of life from a free society.
Clearly, the only reforms necessary to stop the federal monster is to cut its (eight tentacle) grip on finance, housing, healthcare, welfare, education, interior, energy and the environment. [Otherwise, we will be reduced to a giant underclass that is broke, homeless, unhealthy, ignorant, cold in winter, hot in summer, and immobile without justice or Constitutional protections.]
Daniel B. Jeffs
Apple Valley, Ca.
The Washington Examiner
San Bernardino Sun
July 2, 2010
Monumental waste
Though he was summarily dismissed by President Obama and replaced by General Patraeus, we must remember that Gen. Stanley McChrystal has been the best weapon we've had for the war in Iraq and the nearly impossible war in Afghanistan.
McChrystal's lapse in judgment for allowing Rolling Stone reporters around him and his staff notwithstanding, the magazine is a treasonous rag for publishing anything that gives aid and comfort to the enemy, which it did with a condescending profile of McChrystal: "The Runaway General seized control of the war by never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White House." Unfortunately, the commander-in-chief only exacerbated the problem.
Lest we forget, it was then Sen. Obama who condemned Gen. Petraeus for the surge in Iraq that he claimed was not working. Indeed, Obama's premature snap judgment was wrong then, and he is wrong now. Even though he replaced Gen. McChrystal with Petraeus, President Obama is tacitly admitting his lack of grasping serious military judgment and common sense.
President Obama's plan to pull out of Afghanistan next year is another plan he can't carry out simply because his determination to fundamentally change the country with nation-building diplomacy is simply impossible. Afghanistan is unique in that it will always go back to its ancient tribal ways, regardless of what any foreign power does.
Remaining at war in a hopelessly barbarian country is a monumental waste of American lives and defense funds. The president should cut our losses, get out now, send the 90,000 troops to our southern border, build a wall, slam the door and keep it shut.
Daniel B. Jeffs
Apple Valley, CA
June 29, 2010
Same rules of engagement will yield same results Re: "President Obama took command," June 24
I disagree with Michael Barone. President Obama is painting himself in a corner as the captain of chaos. He can't limit his warrior general and troops with unreasonable rules of engagement and expect them to win a war against fanatic barbarians without overwhelming force and collateral damage. With the same restrictions in place, General Petraeus won't make a difference. Plus, he seems beleaguered, nearly passing out in front of a congressional committee. Our troops should kill as many Taliban as they can, herbicide the opium poppy fields, and leave Afghanistan. Then they can step up intelligence, find Osama bin Laden and go after al Qaeda and its terrorist training camps with Predator drones and cruise missiles.
Daniel B. Jeffs
Apple Valley, CA