Katy Pavlich commented on the Five recently that President Biden needed to do something about the southern border problem as it was his responsibility as Commander-in-chief. Now, Ms. Pavlich, in my opinion, is one of the more clued-up and sager among the groups or individuals who are trotted out as either regulars or contributors on Fox.
As a rule, she seems to have thought and analyzed that of which she speaks. However, she stumbled the other day when she made the above comment.
But it probably doesn’t matter. This sort of chatter is common.
The fact is that congress under article I is responsible. But it doesn’t matter. The Constitution has about as much authority as it ever had due to the “more perfect union” having been brought into full flower, in 1787, as a euphemism for a national state. Probably that was the “rat” that Patrick Henry claimed as to his “nosing” the proposed convention in Philadelphia. Henry, of course famously was purported to have said: “I smell a rat,” in his explanation for rejecting the Constitutional Convention.
Under Article 1, powers of congress:
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions–
It’s amazing how thoughts and articles are bandied about concerning the Constitution and various “stalwart” scholars on television; and about a document that is as dead as Benedict Arnold.
And we damn near genuflect to 9 ORDINARY lawyers who are appointed simply as federal appellate judges and are referred to as “Supreme” Constitutional authorities. Good grief, the ability to read and interpret about six thousand words in plain English, and one becomes an “authority.” But they preach over it like pallbearers who think the body lives.
Pavlich was only technically wrong. The president has no control over the border apart from what congress authorizes under the Constitution. He only has affected authority among those who see him as the oft-said “most powerful man in the world.” This is so often said that people throw around his (mostly) fictitious authority as if it is illuminated in neon lights above the busts at Mount Rushmore.
The current edition of the so-called “most powerful man in the world” is a demented fruitcake who probably doesn’t know which direction the Southern border is.
However, today, virtually all federal (read as “national” by most) authority has been taken over by the president, since Lincoln and his precedent-setting takeover of “the more perfect union” many, many years ago. No, Lincoln didn’t really think that black lives mattered back then, but, in fact, raised the question: “What will become of my tariffs?”
To blacks he said “Root hog or die.”
His white-lives Yankee bankers in New England mattered most. His anti-republic neo-nationalism has brought us up to today’s class of citizens who think (and accept) that the president is 1. The leader of the Free World (whatever that is) and 2. The Commander-in-Chief of the country. He isn’t either, though he may become CIC of the military as proper qualifications deem it so. That is, under the Constitution.
Under Article 2, responsibilities of the president:
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
If the former federal union and its Philadelphia Constitution has any authority today that was ultimately ratified, it would be under article 1 whereby Congress is charged with protecting the border from invasion. Even if contemporary congressmen are aware of their duties (I doubt most congressmen have even read the, very brief, Constitution), such a bunch of elected bureaucrats will not act. They are busy with other more important work.
The blue guys want additional votes via open borders.
The red guys want an additional war in Ukraine. And they’ll probably get it. More blood and treasure? No, just blood. The treasure is all in debts (mostly to China). We can keep bleeding but our wallets are empty.
That red wave nonsense everyone is expecting? No, it’ll just be another Washington, D.C, wave with the same clowns watching the borders and crying for dead Constitutional sanity. And the other blue clowns watching the border with more votes as expected.
So, the red guys will get their war. And pay for it with several trillion more printed(debt) dollars, worth less and less and less and less, and…
And the Blue guys will get their voters and turn it back the way they had it; riots, murders, looting, “summers of love,” etc
There is no sanity. Because there is no Constitution.
So, Katy, don’t hold your breath for the president. But neither should you hold your breath for the Constitution either.
We old guys are just running out of breath, no longer able to hold it.
Too bad all those monuments were taken down without learning what they were all about in the first place. That would be a republic that Jefferson and Calhoun were selling; not the silliness the reds and the blues sell.
Maybe there ought to be new one: To Patrick Henry. He certainly had a helluvah nose.
It’s like what Huey Long said, “The High Poplar Lowem and The Low Poplar Highem parties. But Team R, as of now, won’t let 2A die. Unless The Turtle sells us out. Wouldnt mind using my real name here but can’t.