Questions you want answered (P&C Edition)

Bonus_Eruptus wrote:

What is this I don't even

They shouldn't have been in that part of town wearing such provocative robes?

Here is the proper response.

Catholic priests are men, nuns are women, and as with any group are prone to the same deviants, criminals as anyone else. A priest who assaults a child is no different from an uncle or step parent. And they should be dealt with in the same way.

Here is what the Catholic Church misses by a damn mile. We are not so harsh on the molestation as the grand conspiracy and cover up that went on. We are less outraged at Jerry Sandusky and more outraged at the school, staff, administration that let it go on.

The attitude as church other than, even above the law is what sticks in my craw. Worse, they exist in a tax shelter, essentially a subsidy.

Bonus_Eruptus wrote:

What is this I don't even

Yep. Bastion of morality, that Catholic Church.

He'll get promoted for sh*t like that, you know.

Malor wrote:
Bonus_Eruptus wrote:

What is this I don't even

Yep. Bastion of morality, that Catholic Church.

He'll get promoted for sh*t like that, you know.

I'm no die hard fan of the Catholic Church, but in the very same article Joseph Zwilling, spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York says:

The comments made by Father Benedict Groeschel that appeared on the website of the National Catholic Register are simply wrong. Although he is not a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, what Father Groeschel said cannot be allowed to stand unchallenged. The sexual abuse of a minor is a crime, and whoever commits that crime deserves to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
The harm that was done by these remarks was compounded by the assertion that the victim of abuse is responsible for the abuse, or somehow caused the abuse to occur. This is not only terribly wrong, it is also extremely painful for victims. To all those who are hurting because of sexual abuse or because of these comments, please know that you have our profound sympathy and our prayers.
The Archdiocese of New York completely disassociates itself from these comments. They do not reflect our beliefs or our practice."

Yeah, and I bet he'll still get promoted, anyway.

Malor wrote:

Well, our economy is big, and moves slow, and the President is far from the only entity affecting it.

With Obama I've begun to see that the President seems to have very little real power and that if something's going to get done it's going to have Congress backing it. It seems like the President is just there as a figurehead to act as cheerleader for the nation in the hopes of shaping public opinion which will THEN force Congress to act. Has that always been the case or has Obama just been hamstrung since the beginning?

It's been like that since the beginning. The president has a huge amount of discretionary power when it comes to dealing with foreign policy and military matters, but on domestic policy the two branches have to cooperate.

Congress has delegated so much of its own power into agencies staffed with presidential appointees that I have to disagree Kehama. Much and more of the day to day running of the government is in the hands of the president or his appointees. Congress even gave up much of its foreign policy and defense powers to the executive.

And that's why I'm kind of confused. When Bush was in office everyone was talking about the massive power grabs and how the office of the President was heading down a path of becoming a benevolent dictator but now that Obama is in office he can't seem to get anything done. Where did the powers go? With Bush it seemed like most of his big power moves always had the blessing of Congress so, looking back, I'm not sure how much of that was from Presidential pull or something else.

There is a huge contingent of Americans pissed at Obama for continuing and increasing Bush's consolidation of executive power.

I'm not educated enough to give specifics (those executive orders for the epa come to mind, though), others may be able to chime in.

I would be very interested in learning more about how much the POTUS can influence domestic policy.

dejanzie wrote:

I would be very interested in learning more about how much the POTUS can influence domestic policy.

It depends on the party.

Republican president says X needs to happen, republicans in Congress agree that X is the greatest thing ever and you hate Jesus if you say otherwise, blue-dogs agree and it passes.

Democrat president says X, republicans say "no f*cking way you commie bastard", actual liberals think Y is a better option, only centrists vote for it and it doesn't pass.

Not to mention Bush just ignored laws and Congress regularly. Obama actually taught constitutional law at a respected law school and seems to want to be more inline with the original constitutional vision of the presidency where there is more separation of powers and the presidency does not make laws, it enforces them. He seems to take a more restrained approach in presidential decrees than Bush. Bush was the biggest expansion of presidential power in a long time.

Plus the whole opposite party in Congress thing.

And how was Bush able to push the boundaries of his power? How did he (ab)use the presidential decrees, what can they do?

To compare to Belgium: the King is the representative of the executive power, in practice that's the government (Prime Minister + Ministers) and the King signs the royal decrees.

The parliament votes on any law (legislative branch), but it takes a royal decree (executive branch) to put that law into practice. Of course since you need a majority in the Parliament to form a government, there's almost never a conflict between the legislative and executive branch like in the US with a GOP Congress vs DNC President. If there is, the government falls and we have new elections.

Is the implementation something similar?

dejanzie wrote:

And how was Bush able to push the boundaries of his power? How did he (ab)use the presidential decrees, what can they do?

9/11 and a "you're either with us or against us" mentality.

dejanzie wrote:

And how was Bush able to push the boundaries of his power? How did he (ab)use the presidential decrees, what can they do?

Congress has one primary job- passing legislation. It isn't involved in running the day-to-day operations of government- that's the president's job. Sometimes there needs to be government action on issues that Congress hasn't addressed by passing a statute, and broadly speaking, the president can offer executive orders and engage in administrative rule making to cover the gaps.

If a president issues an executive order or passes a rule that Congress opposes, it can pass legislation to overrule that order. It can also refuse to fund implementation of the White House directive. The problem is that when you have a divided Congress, there's usually not enough votes to overrule a president unless the president does something that irks both parties. (I believe that executive orders and rules can be challenged in court if the administration doesn't have any recognized authority over the area, but I don't know how often this works).

So the president can make an impact on domestic policy, but only in those areas where Congress approves of what the president is doing anyway.

dejanzie wrote:

And how was Bush able to push the boundaries of his power?

Primarily because some assholes flew some planes into some buildings.

edit: What OG said.

Bush had a lot of power because he took a lot of power. He simply ignored Congress when it told him to do things he didn't like. The theory was, absolutely literally, that the Executive Branch of the government is not bound by laws. Laws are only for the little people.

Obama doesn't believe that. He follows the law, even when Republicans write it, and even when they explicitly write it to mess him up.

Bush's approach was, basically, "I'm doing it anyway, and you can't stop me."

Malor wrote:

Bush's approach was, basically, "I'm doing it anyway, and you can't stop me."

Wasn't that where Bush's use of signing statements came in? It was my impression that those were where he really flaunted the law and nobody really started noticing until his final years in office. I haven't heard of Obama using those, but then again, it was one of those little used Presidential powers that people before Bush hadn't really trotted out in that manner. Instead of just commentary on a particular law Bush would state that, while signing it into law, that this or that section would not apply to the Executive branch or somesuch. It really was more like a last minute edit of laws without any other branches input.

It's not even really a Presidential power. It's just that Bush was counting on Congress not to send in the Marines to remove him from office.

Kehama, signing statements are only one way the President has to *claim* an interpretation of a law. Courts can step in and mess with those if needed. The second way, and probably more long-lasting, is executive orders. These are a way to control the actions of government without Congress getting involved (although Congress and the courts could react). The third way - the one that Bush really took advantage of, and Obama has as well - is to simply tell the heads of government departments how to run their business. For example, Bush came in and quickly told the EPA to cut back prosecutions, and allowed the number of investigators to go well below the mandated limit. Obama then turned around and crafted a set of budget-positive rules which would have tightened restrictions on things like coal plant emissions.

But overall, Obama has not taken the expansive view of presidential powers that Bush did. Instead, he depended on Congress to get things done, and blew the relationship through a lack of understanding of the process of cultivating political players, as well as through some mis-judgements on the situations of others in crucial negotiations. Interesting article on that topic today in the WaPo.

Congress’s reemergence as a political force is one of the book’s underlying themes. For decades, Capitol Hill has been ceding influence and authority to the White House, especially to presidents who were bent on expanding the powers of the executive branch. In Woodward’s account, the balance of power has shifted at least temporarily back to the legislative branch during the past two years, aided by the Obama administration’s failure to nurture the alliances that it needed to offset the GOP’s huge victory in the 2010 midterm elections. The Republicans took control of the House, claiming 63 new seats, the largest turnover since the 1930s.

The book points out that the administration seemed unprepared for the road ahead, as demonstrated on election night in 2010. “Protocol dictated that the president make a congratulatory call to Boehner,” Woodward writes. “The trouble was, nobody in the White House had thought to get a phone number.”

In the same issue, Ezra Klein makes the case that Obama's major achievements depend on his re-election in order to come to fruition. If he's re-elected, the ACA and the Dodd Frank bills will take effect on schedule, and will likely end up permanent. But if he loses, they will go the way of the dodo, before they even took full effect.

How would a President Romney go about overturning Row vs. Wade? Would it require a Constitutional Amendment to happen?

Atras wrote:

How would a President Romney go about overturning Row vs. Wade? Would it require a Constitutional Amendment to happen?

It just needs to get in front of the Supreme Court again. The court can overturn previous decisions. That the next president likely gets to appoint at least one new justice to the court makes it that much more likely.

Edit: This is likely the reason most of the anti-abortion laws that have sprung up in various states over the past few years aren't being challenged. The current court is currently slightly more conservative than progressive, so a 5-4 decision against abortion rights is likely.

I thought it didn't require SCotUS at all unless the issue was interpretation of language, which ultimately doesn't really ditch an amendment but changes how it's read in a court of law. After all, prohibition (18th amendment) was ultimately repealed by Congress pushing through an amendment (the 21st) that declared the previous amendment to be null and void, wasn't it?

Slightly random question resulting from a conversation I had with a friend the other day: when was the last war between nation-states that ended with things being better for the guys that started it?

Opium Wars?

LarryC wrote:

Opium Wars?

Second Italo-Abyssinian War?

Our invasion of Panama went quite well for us, overall, as did our invasion of Grenada.

I dunno about the last one, but Rome tended to make off pretty well when it invaded places. They were masters of the manufactured casus belli, though.

Which also applies to Panama, interestingly enough.