19 March, 2009

Can Congress Write Any Laws It Wants?

Can Congress Write Any Laws It Wants?

by Andrew P. Napolitano

It is elementary to state that the Constitution mandates that Congress writes the laws and decides how to spend tax dollars, the president enforces the laws as Congress has written them, and the courts interpret the laws as they have been written and enforced to assure their compliance with the Supreme Law of the Land.

As elemental as this sounds, it is hardly recognizable today. After 230 years, we have come to a point where a president declines to enforce laws he has himself signed, directs his Treasury Secretary to make laws interfering with private contracts, and signs executive orders that invade privacy, restrict speech, and appropriate property. Today, we have a Congress that delegates to the president its power to spend taxpayer dollars and money borrowed in the taxpayers’ names, has written laws regulating the air you breath, the water you drink, the words you speak, and relieving the persons with whom you have contracted or to whom you have loaned money from complying with their agreements. And our courts from time to time have raised taxes, run prisons, re-cast the boundaries of school districts, and declined to right obvious constitutional wrongs committed by the other branches.
This is the man who SHOULD be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of these united States- go read the rest of his article.

WP

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