"Czars" have no place in American politics

This is another bad idea that the Obama Administration has taken from the Bush Administration, and expanded and strengthened. It was bad when Bush did it and it's even worse now:

Obama’s Unconstitutional ‘Czars’

Here’s a question that has been nagging me for months. Are Obama’s ever-growing number of “czars” constitutional? I am not a constitutional scholar, but I have read the document.

[...]

The Republican National Committee’s conservative caucus recently passed a resolution expressing their concern noting that “The U.S. Constitution explicitly states government officers with significant authority (called ‘principal officers’) must be nominated by the President and are subject to a vote of the U.S. Senate.”

Obama’s appointments are clearly “principal officers” though it will be argued that they are only advisors to the office of the President. Clearly, Obama’s appointments are not heads of departments, but they appear to have been granted an unknown degree of influence and control as regards their responsibilities. They function “in the dark.”

[...]

...there is an enormous amount of overlap going on and it involves appointees who give the appearance of being doppelgangers to the existing Secretaries and the huge bureaucracies they oversee. They answer directly to the President, but presumably so do the Secretaries whom we occasionally see gathered around a huge table in cabinet meetings.

If these people who have not been approved by the Senate or occupy positions that have not been “established by law” and are not “heads of departments” exist solely at the pleasure of the President, are we not hip deep in some very muddy waters concerning who is answerable to the Senate or House committees?

I am of the belief that Obama has methodically gone about creating a shadow government of men and women with undefined powers, but who likely have even more influence with the Oval Office than those who hold office under the mandates of the Constitution. [...]

It goes on to say there are 30 or more "Czars" right now, and the number is growing.

George Bush opened the door for this with his "drug Czar" nonsense. I was extremely offended at the time, by the term being used to describe anyone holding a position in our government. But at least Bush only had one. Now we have THIRTY?

Read the whole thing, for details about some of them. It's chilling. Isn't this unconstitutional? And where is it going?
     

NASA's Mission to the Moon may be Scrapped

NASA's Trajectory Unrealistic, Panel Says

NASA doesn't have nearly enough money to meet its goal of putting astronauts back on the moon by 2020 -- and it may be the wrong place to go anyway. That's one of the harsh messages emerging from a sweeping review of NASA's human spaceflight program.

Although it is just an advisory panel, the Human Space Flight Plans Committee could turn the entire space program upside down. Appointed by President Obama and headed by retired aerospace executive Norman Augustine, the 10-person panel has held a series of marathon meetings in recent weeks to try to Velcro together some kind of plausible strategy for NASA. The agency's trajectory over the next two decades, as well as the fate of thousands of civil servants and private contractors, could be affected by the group's report, due at the end of this month.

[...]

The administration's overall attitude toward human spaceflight remains unclear. The president, both as a candidate and in the White House, has explicitly endorsed sending humans back to the moon, but his decision to create the Augustine committee is a sign that the status quo strategy, which carries the imprimatur of his predecessor, is not long for this Earth. [...]

Much blame is put on George Bush, for not supplying promised funding and allowing the Constellation program to fall seriously behind schedule.

Many Democrats would like to see the manned space program canceled, and use those funds for social programs. Yet look at how small NASA's part of the budget is:



NASA actually creates jobs, and technology innovations that find commercial application to improve life here on Earth as well. Compare NASA's portion of the budget to the huge areas of wasteful government spending on other areas of the budget that are completely out of control.

Read the whole thing for more information about the status of our space program, the various scenarios it's facing, and what may ultimately happen to it.


Also see:

Orion Spacecraft Changes; Budget Problems

Will Obama cancel NASA's Moon Mission?
     

Obama Supporters Can't Take a Joke

Or even a joker, apparently:

Obama Joker Poster Stirs Outrage, Bush Joker Poster Not So Much

Not surprisingly, the Obama Joker Poster reported by NewsBusters Saturday is already drawing some outrage.

According to a television station where the posters have been spotted, "Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson is calling the depiction, politically mean spirited and dangerous." [...]

And when the same thing happens to a Republican President, what happens? Why nothing, of course:

[...] Yet, when Vanity Fair's Politics & Power blog published a somewhat similar visual representation of George W. Bush last July, nobody seemed to complain. In fact, throughout the Bush years, demeaning drawings of the President and Vice President Dick Cheney were quite commonplace.

[...]

In reality, if I wanted to, I could likely produce hundreds of disgusting drawings of Bush, Cheney, and others in their Administration plastered at publications across the fruited plain the last eight years.

That was acceptable commentary and political satire back then.

Now that Obama is in the White House, it's called "mean-spirited and dangerous."

Any questions?

Follow the link to see the depiction of Bush as a Vampire feeding of the statue of liberty. Heck, what about all the assassination "jokes" the Left used to do about Bush?

I guess the people who dish it out most heavily, can't take even a little bit of it shoveled back in their own direction. It's always All Their Way, or Nothing.

How long before the White House appoints an "Opinion Czar", to make sure we only express politically correct opinions?

I'd like to think that remark is over the top, but the "Health Czar" is already looking for "Big Brother" snitches to spy for them.

Maybe the Obama Team needs to learn to tolerate criticism, and even listen to it sometimes, like every other American Administration that has gone before them has had to do.


Related Link:

Poking fun at politicians is our third favorite sport after baseball and football
     

McClellan: Pop goes the Weasel

Is anyone surprised that McClellan has turned out to be a weasel? I'm not. He was an incompetent, who often seemed more like a deer caught in the headlights than a Press Secratary, when he dealing with the Press. I was amazed he held the job as long as he did. Pat has already posted much of what I would have said about him:

First, only and last post on Scott McClellan

I can't believe we are still hearing claims about the fictional "outing" of Valerie Plame like it was a fact. How do you "out" somebody who was never "in" in the first place? She was never under cover, it was a public fact she worked as an employee for the CIA. Anyone who still beats this dead horse is a liar or worse. How about a creepy opportunist who's trying to sell a book?

McClellan was appointed by Karen Hughes, herself an incompetent opportunist in so many ways, IMO. I wonder when she's going to come out with her book?


UPDATE 05-30-08:

Stealth Publisher of McClellan's Book--George Soros