Posted on 01/30/2009 10:56:35 AM PST by presidio9
We should admit it. There was a breakdown in the balanced operation of the US government.
Amid his first acts in office, President Obama set a timeline for the closure of Guantánamo Bay and secret detention facilities around the world, ended abusive interrogation techniques, and lifted secrecy restrictions ordered by President George W. Bush on the records of past presidents. These moves are welcome, but they do not change the fact that during the last administration, President Bush and Vice President Cheney were confronted with too few checks on their expansive interpretation of executive power.
It's time for some rewiring. Just as we have to create new strategies to deal with shortcomings recently revealed in our economic system, we have to address this lack of accountability within the executive branch. One simple solution lies in how the attorney general is appointed.
It is the attorney general's responsibility to ensure that the laws of the country are enforced, including against the country's highest office holders. Yet, in our current system the attorney general's loyalty is torn between the laws he or she swears to uphold and the president.
Attorney Generals John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales were widely seen by critics as too beholden to President Bush and his far-reaching vision of executive power to effectively police the president or his administration. Such conflicts of interest are not new. Eric Holder's nomination for attorney general is currently stalled because he supposedly showed too little independence as deputy attorney general when recommending pardons favored by President Clinton.
The answer to this problem lies not in decrying the politicization of the attorney general's office by presidents, but instead in making the attorney general independent and politically accountable through nationwide election.
An elected attorney general would
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Oh, yeah, that’ll work.
Brilliant. Let 50.01% of the people decide who has the power to prosecute the other 49.99%.
Just look at the weasels who get elected attorneys general in other states (Spitzer in NY, Jim Maddox formerly in Texas.) I can see it now. Win by promising to prosecute ‘the rich’ and send non-producers a settlement check.
And every state should also be able to have the right to recall every politician and every judge all they way up to include the POTUS and TSCOTUS.
The reason the President gets to appoint the AG is the same reason why the President is CIC of the Armed Forces.
I’m thinking you’d need a constitutional ammendment for that to happen, which essentially means it ain’t happnin’. Your observations are valid, but the biggest toady in the AG slot in recent memory was Janet “see no evil, hear no evil” Reno.
I object to calling them “abusive” interrogation techniques. Instead, they should be called “successful” interrogation techniques.
I'm not disagreeing with you. But, how exactly is that different from what happened just a couple of months ago?
interesting idea. We generally have that arrangement at the state level and it seems to work in its own way.
I’d go for that one. We need to start using the recall power we do have right now.
OMG, what does this liberal loser moron "journalist" think the job of the F##KING CONGRESS is? AAAAAUUUGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!
You'd have to rewrite the Constitution, and that would require a convention and then you've just opened up a whole can of worms that should just be left alone.
As flawed as the Constitution may be to some; to think we, with our current crop of corrupt pols and dumbed down electorate, could improve on what the founders forged, well, it ain't gonna happen. We'd end up with some crazy 10,000 page document like the EU came up with, that not all states have signed on to.
It ain't really broke (just the people reading and enforcing it), so lets not try and fix it.
LOL Christian Science Monitor, lol.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.