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Friday, February 16, 2007
Today we're going to discuss the phony claim by George Bush and Dick Cheney that Bush has unfettered power to wage war in Iraq -- and one assumes elsewhere -- as he sees fit. Congressional oversight? Surely you jest.
In law school you usually take at least a beginning course in constitutional law. The subject is often referred to as con law. The situation with Bush and Cheney thus can be described as cons trying to con us about con law.
You'll hear my first ever interview of a right-winger, a fairly prominent commentator. On this topic, it's a friendly conversation. Intrigued?
The bottom line is, war powers are subject to the same balance of power between the branches as everything else in the Constitution.
The Constitution’s drafters were intent on balancing power so no one branch could drift toward despotism. The system of checks and balances that runs through the document divides the war power between the president and Congress. We'll establish the ironclad validity of this proposition by examining 4 areas:
1. the text of the Constitution
2. the intent of the founding fathers
3. Supreme Court decisions, and
4. historical precedent
Listen to the podcast for the details.
(PS: Right-wingers, if you want to write in to me, fine, but at least do me the courtesy of listening to the podcast first. Please don't respond just on the basis of the brief written summary above. Thanks!)
For those who aren't familiar with podcasts, podcasts are a series of mp3 audio files that you download to your computer or portable music device (iPod or other) and then can listen to whenever you want.
You don't need an iPod to listen to podcasts.
Podcast software like iTunes will automatically check a podcast at intervals you specify, and download any new installments.
iTunes is free and very easy to use. http://www.apple.com/itunes/
In iTunes, if you want to subscribe to my podcast, just click on Advanced at the top right, then choose Subscribe to Podcast, and paste in the URL http://feeds.feedburner.com/blasttheright
That's the URL to use for other podcast-friendly software programs as well.
Alternatively, you can just manually download new episodes from my podcast home page as they become available. Here is a link to my podcast's home page: http://www.therationalradical.com/podcast.html
Enjoy!!
Jack Clark 9:44 PM [+]
Post #117169116142340580
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