Thanks. 
Hmm hm hm hm, hm-hmm. Hmm hm hm hm hm hm, hm-hmm. I’ll kill you! :mad:
What’s the big deal, anyway? Aren’t all of these czars doing things that the President already has authority over anyway? If he has the power, then he can delegate the power to someone else.
But they’re czars, man, czars! That’s just scary. I mean, the word has ‘cz’ in it! What decent right-thinking Christian word has ‘cz’ in it, I ask you?!
Let me czech back with you later on that one.
Czar tsar tzar csar. Which is worst!
For whatever reason, the Constitution requires the President to get the advice and consent of the Senate whenever he wants to appoint an ambassador, as well as ‘public ministers and consuls’ and various ‘other officers of the United States’. If he got every Cabinet post filled except Secretary of Defense, I’d guess he could pretty much just shrug and get the job done anyway; he’s already the Commander-in-Chief, he can pretty much just order everyone around instead of delegating it to an intermediary. If, though, he got a SecDef approved (a) along with danged near everyone else he’d wanted, (b) but the Senate keeps rejecting his choices for ambassador to New Zealand or whatever, I’d figure he could handle those ambassadorial duties personally, if he felt like it; they’re all just stand-ins for him, right?
Now, I have no idea why the Founders thought it was a big deal to require Senate confirmation of various and sundry folks who the President appoints to do stuff the President has authority over. Still, whatever that concern is, it’s presumably what czars manage an end-run around: they get the delegated goodies without needing the advice and consent of the Senate, which is supposed to be a big deal, for some reason.
The question then is what constitutes a “public minister” or “officer of the United States”, and whether the czars qualify.
Unless they can’t cut the mustard.
I couldn’t help but notice that Bush had more Czars than Obama has. I wonder if Mr Beck has mentioned that tidbit.
Well, yes and no.
I mean, sure, if someone lays out a terrific argument that the czars so qualify, then, yes, I’d see them as scary and unconstitutional. But my point is that, even if we grant for the sake of argument that they don’t qualify, it’s still plausibly scary that czars are exempt from the advice-and-consent bit when doing stuff rather like what ministers and officers with delegated authority do; I still don’t know why we think it’s so important for the latter, but I figure it should still make us raise an eyebrow about the former.
It’s like if a hypothetical statute forbade anyone who’d ever served in the Army from being Secretary of Defense for some reason; I’d grant for the sake of argument that it doesn’t bar ex-Marines, but I’d still figure the same idea – whatever it was – should still concern us.
If he appoints a czar named John, could we then refer to him as Ivan the Great/Terrible? (Depending on performance, naturally!)
KGB.
Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti.
Committee for State Security.
Department of Homeland Security.
People are just now freaking out about vaguely Russian-sounding words in U.S. government? That ship has sailed.