April 15, 2020

A clear and present danger

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Mr. President, your powers are not “total”. A simple reading of the Law of the Land clearly demonstrates that, even in times of crisis.


7 comments:

Ed Bonderenka said...

I'm not worried.
His response to an earlier request by a "reporter" as to why he hadn't locked down the whole country was "the Constitution".
He should be more cautious with his words.
But he is Trump.

Joe said...

I think you are right, it is typical Trump bluster and hyperbole.

I can’t help but wonder about the posts I would write if Obama has said something similar.

I can’t excuse what Trump said

Practical Parsimony said...

Trump does not care whether you excuse him or not. He is hell-bent on tromping on the Constitution. He is deranged!

Joe said...

Outside this I’ll-advise comment, where else has he abused the Constitution?

Ed Bonderenka said...

It was ill-advised.
I'm not perfect either.
But he is NOT trashing the Constitution.
Deranged?
I should be so deranged.

glasslass said...

Tucker Carlson last night asked the Gov. of NJ where he got the authority to close down the state. Lots of double talk and didn't answer the question. But...Lets say Trump or the Gov. got up and announced when this started that - This is gonna get ugly people and lots will die and you all need to close your business's and everyone stay home. That's it, nothing else. Now imagine the consequences of that action. No, the constitution does not give them this power. But...can we live with what would be the results 2 months later. How many more people would have died because you know that no one would have done what they asked. It would be "my business is too important to shut, I can't make my bills if I don't work". Every excuse to justify not paying attention. No it's not in our constitution but someone has to be the adult in the room.

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

Just to make a point, and sorry I'm late, but none of the executive orders promulgated by the governors are legally enforceable. You can't create an offense with an executive order. You need the legislature to make law to do that.

This is why Holcomb has admitted that he can't enforce the stay-at-home order he signed, even though he won't do the civil thing and withdraw it, and the police are stopping no one over it (the State Police have specifically said they won't be stopping cars in an effort to enforce the order).

Also why, in the end, the Michigan Nazi is going to be thrown out of office and prosecuted for violating the civil rights of her citizens under the color of law. Dewhiner in Ohio probably will be, too. And the fool governor in Colorado, and that mayor down in Greenville, MS who had his boys cite drive-in churchgoers.

Politicians are going to pay for destroying the economy and putting people out of work. November is not that far off and people are going to remember.

The models have been wrong from the start, as models created with insufficient data usually are. The curve didn't just flatten, it fell way off. And now some smart people are saying things like, "maybe more people already had it last fall than we know", and "possibly the virus is mutating into a less lethal form", and that sort of thing.

If we let people out, yeah, people are going to get sick, and some of them will die. But I'd rather see that than see our economy destroyed. I'm one of those folks who's high-risk for dying from the stupid thing, so I'm not being high-handed with other people's lives, here. I've got skin in the game myself.

But I think in the end, the people themselves will drive the end of the stay-at-home orders, because they're tired of sitting around the house doing nothing.

To answer the immediate question above, Trump has done nothing to the Constitution. But the governors both R and D have been trampling it underfoot ever since the beginning of March. What Trump did was his usual trick of saying he has the power to do something in order to buffalo someone else into asserting that no, THEY have the power to do that. He forced the governors into asserting their own power to start opening the states back up, and then he handed them a set of uniform federal guidelines to do that and said, "Well, then get cracking!"

Shorter Donald Trump: "Please don't throw me into that briar patch, B'rer Wolf." And they fall for it EVERY TIME.

Consider everything here that is of original content copyrighted as of March 2005
Powered By Blogger