Returning Power To Congress and the States from The Executive Branch and the Judiciary

By Douglas V. Gibbs

Article I, Section 1 of the United States Constitution is clear. All legislative powers belong to the U.S. Congress. This means that any legislative activity outside of Congress is unconstitutional. Executive Orders cannot modify law, and the judiciary cannot strike down law. The authority to make law, modify law, strike down law, or affect law in any way belongs solely to the legislative branch.

Three co-equal branches of the government is a myth created by those who wish to subvert the system originally intended by our Founding Fathers. The Congress, listed first in the U.S. Constitution (Article I) is supposed to be the strongest branch of the three. The legislative branch has the power to make law, override the President's veto, and impeach both the president, and the members of the judiciary.

Before 1913, specifically before the 17th Amendment, the U.S. Senate was the voice of the States in the federal government. The House of Representatives has always been the voice of the people. Therefore, the most powerful voices in the federal government is supposed to be the people, and the States - not the President and his cronies, and the judiciary.

In today's society, however, the Supreme Court and the President of the United States has become the most visible part of the U.S. Government, and the voices of the States and the Congress have been relegated to irrelevance. The President has become the tone-setter, and the courts have become the final okay in all things done by both the federal government, and the states. The powers of the Executive Branch, and the Judicial Branch, have become vast, and beyond what was originally intended by the U.S. Constitution.

The powers of the Executive and Judicial branches were seized by those branches, without permission from the people, or the States, with whom the social contract called the U.S. Constitution was authorized by in the first place. The Executive Branch seized its expansive powers by literally ignoring the legislative branch, and the U.S. Constitution. The judiciary seized its power by granting to itself judicial review. These powers, understand, were taken by those two branches of government. Those powers were not granted by the people, or the States.

In a nation divided, and with crisis all around, it is the strength of the Congress and the States that must prevail. The Executive Branch has been taken over by a straight out Marxist, and judicial activism has reached a point where the courts are brazenly ignoring the rule of law as set forth by the U.S. Constitution.

The federal government has attempted to rise above the rule of law, the will of the people, and the sovereignty of the States. The ballot has become the last refuge of the American system, and it is now that we must use that power to return to Congress the power it was given by our nation's framers. It is time to return the American Form of Government to the limitations set forth by the U.S. Constitution.

Through the authorities granted by the U.S. Constitution, the framework of the federal government is supposed to be restricted to only the powers granted to the U.S. Government by the Constitution. By refusing to adhere to the limitations given by the Constitution, the federal government has literally seized power unconstitutionally. The government's subversion of the U.S. Constitution has placed the checks and balances in jeopardy, placing at risk the very system that has made this nation great. If the system that has made this nation prosper is being ignored, then the system being put into its place will surely accomplish the opposite, and tear apart this nation by its seams.

Power is a dangerous drug, which is why the Founding Fathers intended for governmental power to be divided in every way possible. To compromise that system of checks and balances, and vest most governmental power in the Executive and Judicial branches, the only result can be the failure of the system in the long run. Good intentions, or not, too much power in one location does not encourage the government to practice self-restraint.

The true tragedy is that the unconstitutional manner in which the federal government has been operating has been going on so long that nobody remembers what our system is supposed to be like. Sure, we remember Ronald Reagan's attempt to return it back to the founding principles, and we prospered as a result, but aside from Reagan, and a brief moment of correction during the Harding and Coolidge presidencies, for the most part we have not seen a Constitutional government since before the American Civil War.

If none of us remember how our system is supposed to run, other than with brief glimpses a couple times during the last century, how then shall the new generation take this country back to its constitutional foundations?

To recognize the path we must take we need to consult history, and the only porthole we have to the wisdom of the ages that went into the forging of our nation is through the writings of our Founding Fathers. In other words, our tutors are not the politicians of today, but the statesmen of yesterday. Through their wisdom lies the future of America. To abandon that wisdom is to abandon America, and to allow this nation to drop into a position of second class status, and a socialist nightmare that could only be resolved by collapse, and revolution.

Great men do not always say great things. They don't point a finger at themselves to convince everyone that they are the leader. They don't say, "I won," to get everyone to follow their lead. Great men lead with character, self discipline, and an understanding that government is not about them. . . government is about the States, the people, and the rule of law as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution.

A great people understands that power undivided is power unrestrained. The hope of America lies in our ability to take away the power seized by the President and the Judiciary, and returning it to the sovereign states, and the people's voice through the U.S. Congress. Irrelevance of the States, and of Congress, is simply unacceptable.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary