Alexander Hamiltontook the interstate commerce clause and began stretching it in order to get his national bank.
His political heirs have stretched the interstate commerce clause so far to include school zones banning drugs and guns (since drugs and guns might hurt the education of kids who might one day grow up and not be optimal workers for businesses engaged in interstate trade), to ban farmers from growing wheat to feed their own animals, and to prohibit Ms. Rausch from smoking a medically prescribed doobie grown in her own back yard.
The commerce clause is clearly out of control.
But now we have a new elastic clause: the President’s warmaking power.
If, as Republican apologists would have us believe, FISA is unconstitutional because it limits the President’s ability to wage war, could that argument not be expanded past the original intent?
The free press, as many Republicans would have us believe, are, if not in direct cahoots with Osama, certainly helping out his cause. Bush has said that the New York Times has compromised our security. Could Bush shut down the Grey Lady in order to prosecute his war more effectively?
Heck, defeatist alarmists in this country are sapping our will to fight. Under the war powers doctrine, could Bush order the assassination of Naked Villainy’s own Minister of Propaganda?
What if Bush decided that increasing demand for fuel compromises our security by making us dependent on oil imports? Could he ban SUVs by administrative fiat?
For our Republicans out there, I would urge you not to embrace the “War Powers Trump All” Doctrine. You might be giving that power to President Hillary.
Just sayin’.
