page 40…
Article II of the United States Constitution provides that any citizen of appropriate birth, age and residency may be elected to the Office of President of the United States and be vested with the executive power of this nation.48
The duties and powers of the Chief Executive are carefully listed, including the duty to be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States,49 and the Presidential Oath of Office is set forth in the Constitution and requires him to swear or affirm that he Âwill, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.Â50
The Government appears to argue here that, pursuant to the penumbra of Constitutional language in Article II, and particularly because the President is designated Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, he has been granted the inherent power to violate not only the laws of the Congress but the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution, itself.
We must first note that the Office of the Chief Executive has itself been created, with its powers, by the Constitution. There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution. So all Âinherent powers must derive from that Constitution.
I don’t think there is a more important phrase in this whole opinion than the one I highlighted in the above text; There are no hereditary KingsAmericaeric… and someone in the White House had better convince George W Bush of that fact…soon.
For an administration that purports to want to spread democracy around the globe the continued mis-use of power leads one to wonder if the common definition of democracy is to be found in the dictionary in the Oval Office (assuming of course that anyone in that office would ever look up a definition). Will someone please explain to the decider-in-chief that democracy is spelled with a “d” and not a “th”…
