[A.J.Armitage]

Yes, and I think that's a good example of why your blind adherence to principles over the person is wrongheaded. If Tiger Woods or Mr. Rogers moves in next door, you're going to throw out your former, generic "principled" policy of not letting your child go next door to see your neighbor; the policy that you had in place when your next door neighbor was a convicted child rapist, previously. You see, the person in question really does make a difference.

It does if you can actually choose to let one person have it but not the next one, which is unlike the situation with presidents. You gave counter-examples, but none of them work, as we'll see.

You mean like letting one President have the line item veto, briefly, but then no other President got it?

That was, you might recall, struck down as unConstitutional by the Supreme Court. If it had been held Constitutional, Bush would have it now. Actually, that supports my case, because it was enacted to go into effect in 1997, after the inauguration. The republicans in Congress meant it for Dole, but only the intervention of the Court took it away from Clinton.

Or like initiating a prohibition on alcohol during one or two administrations and then repealing that power for other administrations?

You may or may not know that it took an amendment to repeal prohibition, and that this amendment was passed with the encouragement of the then president, FDR. Prohibition doesn't really fit, however, because it wasn't a discretionary power; the president was required by it to act in a particular way.

Or like reigning in Presidential powers with something like the War Powers Act so that other Presidents didn't have the power that one President in particular had?

It wasn't that one president in particular. Remember, Johnson had used the same powers Nixon had. If you'll look at what they did, it didn't apply just to Richard Nixon. They saw, rightly, that the problem was too much power vested in the president, and took some away. The only problem is, they didn't go far enough.

Maybe we should learn the lesson and limit, not expand, the powers of the president.

Let me ask you a serious question. Do you really think these new powers are going to just go away if a democrat takes office?

Logic, facts, and reason would actually be preferred

If you can avoid confusing sophistry for logic and repeated sophistry for reason, we might get somewhere.

[Southack]

"It wasn't that one president in particular. Remember, Johnson had used the same powers Nixon had. If you'll look at what they did, it didn't apply just to Richard Nixon. They saw, rightly, that the problem was too much power vested in the president, and took some away. The only problem is, they didn't go far enough."

And yet, power was taken away from future Presidents...