[Info-vax] [OT] What is happening in/to the US ?

[Scott Dorsey]

Dave Froble  <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>
>Ok, at the risk of upsetting some, I'm going to say that the President actually 
>is above the law.  The President has to be at some times.  The President is the 
>implementation of the will of the people.  Sometimes he has to "break the laws". 

No.  This is the case in some countries, but not in the American system
where we have (or are supposed to have) a government of laws rather than
people.  Nobody is above the law.  You may recall that there was a lot of
discussion about this during Watergate.  

The president IS the implementation of the will of the people, but so is
Congress and so is (to a slightly lesser extent) the Supreme Court.


>  Or is Obama guilty for having Bin Laden killed?  Killing is illegal, isn't it. 

No, because (unfortunately) during the cold war one of the abilities 
delegated from Congress to the President is a (limited but still broad)
ability to make war.  So it was legal for him to have Bin Laden killed.
That's an easy question.

Was it moral?  Was it a good idea?  Should he have the ability to do
this?  These are all much harder questions to answer.

>  The only judge and jury for a President is ultimately the voting public, and 
>sometimes, congress, but we've seen how that doesn't seem to work, haven't we?

In the past it's been pretty effective, though we have had occasional 
blips here and there like Warren G. Harding's presidency.  But the huge
virtue of having a government of laws and having those laws enforced
is that it takes a lot more than just one person to cause permanent damage.

This doesn't, of course, mean that permanent damage isn't possible.  But it's
a lot harder than it was for von Hindenberg.
--scott

-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."