Wait a minute... he's saying the Congressional power to declare war could NOT be Constitutionally passed over to the Executive?

Funny how that analysis didn't come up about six years ago.

Simple enough. When voted into power, Republicans love the ballot. When voted out of power, not so much.

it is fundamental to everything republican/conservative that they seek to entrench the US as an authoritarian plutocracy, with their ilk as the ruling class. Everything they do is sophisticated manipulation and doublespeak to that ignoble, anti-American values, end. Republicans/conservatives flat out do not believe in Jeffersonian individual rights and equality, or Madisonian separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution. They believe in unrestrained power to a ruling class. They use, abuse, and manipulate the Constitution as a prop to achieve their ends.

George Will is not a "legal conservative." He's a conservative pundit who pulls the majority of his opinions out of his ass.

Everything they [Republicans] do is sophisticated manipulation and doublespeak to that ignoble, anti-American values, end.

Isn't it amazing how, when a person is given a few column inches in a major paper, they never, ever lose that column?
Will is a perfect example. Safire in the NY Times was another. Fat, stupid Jonah (God, I wish Belushi was alive to satirize that asshole) is the latest.
When it comes to accuracy, weathermen are right more often. And if they're not, they lose their jobs.
But, not columnist's.
Uhm, how do I get in on this racket?

Will wrote at least two columns about the Unitary Executive, one in which he declared it to be a creation of liberalism(!) and another in which he acted as an apologist for the Bush administration's excesses in the interest of national security. No mention of the Reagan administration's providing weapons to Iran or it's violation of the Boland Amendment.
Will's view of the legitimate powers of a President is heavily influenced by that president's party affiliation.
George should stick to climatology.

Conservatives are doing everything that they can to deconstruct democratic principles, and they will not stop until they have devolved this country into a complete feudal system, complete with robber barons and the powerless people working for them.

Will frequently uses his column to be a mainstream gateway for ideological thinking that resides on the fringe of the right wing without disclosing that fact to his readers. Thus, Federalist Society members are introduced as nothing more alarming than legal "experts" or "scholars" without any consumer warnings attached whatsoever as to their ideological agendas.

My complaint with Will, which I mentioned in the comment section of his column on WaPo, was that before complaining about Congress voluntarily giving the president discretionary spending authority, Will first needed to establish his own credentials as a critic of the Bush/Cheney "unity executive" power grab that was far more a threat to checks and balances that what Will talks about. This power grab was in fact supported by the very same Federalist Society, which supplied much of the "legal" justification behind it, and would allow a president on his own to declare war against any nation as well as to declare what was law and what was not -- the effect if not the intent of Bush's record number of signing statements.

Is this what Michele Bachmann was blathering about when she was questioning Geithner the other day and kept trying to tie the Treasury department to the Constitution? (Not that she's smart enough to come up with that idea herself, of course.) It at least helps her actions make some sort of dim sense.

There is a growing theme among right wing commentators who point out that America is a "republic and not a democracy." The obvious intent is to de-legitimize two national elections in which conservatism was thoroughly repudiated by the people -- or as conservatives secretly think of them: "the democratic mob." Who cares if the public doesn't like conservatism, they say, we are not a democracy anyway. We're a republic that keeps the mob in its place.

Funny thing about this "republic not democracy" theme, however. All that really means is that America is a democracy under law, under a constitution, in which the majority rules but only insofar as it picks those people who make the laws -- a point that Right Wing populist conservatives like Tom DeLay and Rush Limbaugh frequently forget when they incite the mob to violence against "rule of law" in their attacks against the "judicial tyranny" of the Supreme Court when it "defies the will of the people" when it strikes down laws that conservatives like (such as those against abortion and for school prayer) as unconstitutional. Then, conservatives are all for majority rule, all for populist democracy. Maybe that is why Rush and O'Reilly like to cite their ratings so often as proof they speak for the people.

Every once in a while (usually three of four times a week, if not daily), the inestimable Mr. Will earns the superior wrath of his Progressive counterpart (being roughly 80% of the American population). This morning's effort is no different.

Mr. Will is stating, in his own diluted logic, that the Congress of the United States is barred from enacting a specific legislative rendition, thereby arguing that they are prohibited from legislating.

If the Congress is, by Mr. Will's estimation, prohibited from legislating, then they are subsequently prohibited by Mr. Will from not only their responsibility to express themselves through that legislation, but likewise prevented from serving as the voice of the collective People of these United States.

Given this scenario, I can only find that Mr. Will, by overtly seeking to deny others their Constitutional Right as guaranteed under the First Amendment by means of his own unauthorized unilateral legislative declarations, is himself completely and undeniably Unconstitutional.

I just figured this was a wave at the conservatives in the Judiciary and Federalist Society types to overturn the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (EESA) the way FDR's NRA was overturned.
Consistency from Will? Well, consistent party/Conservative Movement hackery...

After all the country has been through with conservatives, conservative "thought," and theory and application of the Unitary Executive, I find a paced analysis of Will's column less useful than smearing it in feces.

Conservatives should be treated like creationists. They should be mocked, derided and laughed at until their arguments have at least a patina of consistency or reality.

And anyone who thinks the New Deal should be dismantled is in the same delusional ball park as people who think women came from Adam's rib. So cogent argument is unlikely to reach them anyway.

But it won't happen because folks in the beltway and political types cling to the illusion of debate, even when the debate has been well settled.

States Rights Anti-abortion: good
States Rights Assisted Euthenasia: bad
States Rights Ten Commandments: good
States Rights Legalize Marijuana: bad

With all that internal conflict, how do these guys sleep at night? Oh wait, RWA personality syndrome. Hypocricy: good.

People like Bork argued that, because liberals can't win things like abortion rights at the ballot box, they politicized the Constitution and imposed their preferences into its text.
The much neglected Ninth Amendment invalidates that line of reasoning anyway. With unenumerated rights being thereby declared in A9, courts have to ask whether we "ought" to have a given right, like "privacy." (Conservatives ironically hate A9, even though it limits the power of the government to suppress us. Isn't that odd?)

As for constitutionality in general, we haven't been very strict for years and years from either major party. I figure even the Lewis and Clark expedition doesn't have explicit permission in the USC (where does it authorize for exploratory expeditions?), the Smithsonian, the space program (heh, Birchers once called NASA "socialism in a space suit" - at least they're consistent) etc.

Most conservatives cherry-pick constitutionality to suit their partisan purposes, and the real hard constitutionalists are fringers that regular Republicans make fun of (Ron Paul?)

Every single time I read about Cass Sunstein, he's 'even liberal Cass Sunstein' who's pushing some far-right agenda.

Every single time.

Next week, Will be back to railing about Campaign Finance Reform curtailing the voice of the people.

Will is similar to Bill O'Arrogantone; without any legal training, they both believe they should be on the Supreme Court. They should both stick to what they know best, respectively. Will with the Orioles and Bill with loofahs.

BTW isn't the President the "Executive"? Look at the etymology of that term ...

George Will and the Federalist Society are wholly consistent in the only way that really matters to the narrow but powerful interests they serve: they consistently defend the wealthy few who believe their wealth entitles them to rule over all the rest of us. They would defend the 'Divine Right of Kings' if it was useful in any particular battle and in fact just about did so in defending the nonsensical theory of the "Unitary Executive".

Don't look to George Will for principle or logical consistency. His modus operandi is thinly argued sophistry on behalf of whatever his masters are peddling at the moment.

The radical argument that the admin state is unconstitutional is an argument that even Scalia wouldn't make, he was after all an admin law professor and president of the ABA's admin law section.

Conservatives like Will have nothing against the ballot . . . so long as it's restricted to its original owners, white males with property.

Otherwise, not so much.

Am I the only one who loves it when George Will has to keep up apperances by arguing his laissez faire economic orthodoxy in the presence of a trained Nobel Prize economist like Paul Krugman, knowing that Krugman at any time could blow him out of the water?

Where was Will when Congress passed the AUMF? He apparently had no problem when Congress delegated its war-declaring authority to the executive branch.

Will's idea of intellectual rigor is putting on his glasses and bowtie. Not a man to be taken seriously.

Actually, Will's hypothetical statute -- which would *outlaw* transactions that do not promote goodness and niceness -- would be unconstitutional, because it would be an overly vague criminal law and would also violate the first amendment since it would facially outlaw all sorts of speech-related conduct.

But that's a whole different issue compared to the extent to which Congress can use its tax-and-spend power to establish the EESA or its commerce power to establish regulatory agencies.

Just as the Republicans in Congress are acting like neo-Hooverites, its not surprising that conservative legal scholars are acting like neo-Lochnerians.

Who could have predicted that conservatives would re-discover the Constitution once a Democrat assumed the White House?

Who could have predicted that Republicans would re-discover the value of fiscal prudence once they lost control of Congress???