From the very beginning, as soon as the Constitution was ratified and the system of checks and balances went into effect, the three branches of the government have been pushing and pulling on one another trying to become the dominant force. The system seems pretty elegant on paper. We have a bi-cameral legislative branch that makes laws, an executive branch that carries out those laws and a judicial branch that makes sure that those laws operate within the rules set forth by the Constitution. The problem is basic human nature. If you have a source of money and especially if you have a source of power over others, then people are going to try to seize control of that source. The source in question is the Federal government and while the money is the obvious prize, the power is what seems to drive so many of our rulers.
Originally intended as a limited national government that would provide for the common defense and adjudicate disputes between the states, the Federal government’s size, scope and power has grown without pause since it was formed. Some of the major milestones on the way to where we are today include the Civil War, when the Federal government went to war to forcibly hold the Union together when southern states that voluntarily chose to become part of the United States were told they could not voluntarily choose to leave; the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment creating the Federal income tax; the administration of FDR with the “New Deal”; the administration of LBJ that brought us the “Civil Rights” Act, the Voting Rights Act, the “War On Poverty” that created the welfare state while imprisoning generations in poverty and the Immigration “Reform” Act of 1965 that opened the floodgates to replacing the American people; and most recently the draconian Covid-19 lockdowns in response to a bioweapon that was in part created by the same Federal government.
Through the years the power has ebbed and flowed but I think it is safe to say that in the current day Congress is at the bottom of the heap. Thanks to narrow majorities, absolutely ineffective leadership especially from the GOP and a tendency to write enormous bills no has read or can read full of vague laws, Congress seems to be mostly a bystander. The United States waged two wars and occupations following 9/11 that last for two decades and Congress pretty much just handed over the cash with zero oversight. Most laws are so vague that they are essentially meaningless and the executive branch bureaucrats decide how to interpret and apply those general guidelines. Given that the “budget” is a joke and the government just spends whatever the hell it wants, the annual “debt ceiling” kabuki theater notwithstanding, Congress could pretty much close shop and AOC could go back to shaking her ass for tips as a bartender, Ilhan Omar could be a housewife for her brother and the rest of them could sell used cars or Cutco knives or whatever.
The Executive Branch is in the middle by virtue of deciding what the laws mean and how to apply them, not to mention the sheer size of the branch which includes the millions serving in the military. Despite a series of weak and moronic presidents stretching from George H.W. Bush through the Pedo Joe Biden regime, the Executive has held sway over the Legislative branch. Much of what passes for laws today is enacted through “Executive Orders” that circumvent the Legislative branch entirely.
That leaves the Judiciary. The Supreme Court has been making laws from the bench for a long time, laws like Griswold v. Connecticut that created a “right” for married couples to use contraception, the ruling based on “privacy” that created from thin air the “right” to an abortion in Roe v Wade. Of course we would be remiss if we didn’t also mention Loving v. Virginia finding a “right” in the Constitution for interracial marriage or Lawrence v. Texas that found hidden deep in the crack of the Constitution an absolute right for dudes to engage in gay butt sex, leading later to Obergefell v. Hodges that whipped up a new “right” for those same fags to get “married”, adopt baby boys to groom into sex toys later and play house. While none of those issues are found anywhere in the Constitution and the Founders would have pistol whipped you for suggesting they are, the SCOTUS decided that they were and despite any legislative action things like dudes sodomizing each other and women killing their unborn children became “law”.
While the new “conservative” SCOTUS has rolled back some of that, most notably abortion, and reinforced the 2nd Amendment via New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, we still have random Federal judges who think they can simply declare an injunction to stop the Orange Man from day to day operations in the Executive Branch where he is basically the CEO. As anticipated, this has been happening a lot in an effort to slow down the tidal wave of executive orders that Trump has been handing down.
One of the most recent ones had to do with preventing employees of the Executive Branch (DOGE) from legally accessing records from a department of the Executive Branch (Treasury).
Judge blocks Musk team access to Treasury Department records
A federal judge has blocked Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) from accessing the personal financial data of millions of Americans in Treasury Department records, according to court documents.
US District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer issued a preliminary injunction on Saturday to prohibit access, ordering Musk and his team to immediately destroy any copies of records.
The move comes after 19 state attorneys general sued the Trump administration after Doge, a cost-cutting initiative led by Musk, was given access to the records.
Apparently duly appointed representatives of the President may not, on his behalf, try to figure out where disbursements from the Treasury Department are going. The judge in question is one Paul A. Engelmayer, an Obama appointee.
Were he not a Federal judge I might suggest that his smirking face is a face begging to get pushed in but of course I will not do so as he is in fact a Federal judge. Based on the name and the face you can probably figure it out for yourself….
Engelmayer and his wife, Emily Mandelstam, who are both Jewish, live in Manhattan.
You could knock me over with a feather. His wife, Emily Felice Mandelstam, is another far left idealogue:
Ms. Mandelstam is keeping her name. She was until recently a program development specialist at the New York Association for New Americans, a refugee resettlement organization.
“New Americans” but the Great Replacement is a right-wing conspiracy theory dontcha know? Engelmayer is a district judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. How does that give him the power to dictate how the executive branch operates? It doesn’t but he thinks it does.
We are heading for a court battle as the SCOTUS will likely have to rule on this question. Hopefully it will take up one or more of these cases soon because otherwise Trump will continue to be thwarted as leftist groups shop for friendly venues to file suit. To be fair, right-wing groups like gun groups do the same thing.
What I would prefer would be for Trump to simply ignore these judges or perhaps even have them arrested. The Left ignores the law when it suits them while “conservatives” are told they must take the “high ground” and win “moral victories”, or as I put it: Fighting In A Cage Using The Queensberry Rules
The political science major in me finds this quite fascinating. The judiciary is out of control and we are living in a kritarchy, a government ruled by judges. Judges are supposed to be powerful but limited in our system in their own way, being unelected and serving for life in the case of Federal judges, intended to give them insulation from the political process, but when they are overstepping their bounds there isn’t much that can be done about it short of a Supreme Court ruling that slaps them down. When judges go rogue like Paul Engelmayer there isn’t really a check on their shenanigans because the judicial branch has been running wild for decades. This might be an opportunity for the SCOTUS to rein them in a bit.
This is the sort of thing that makes me only half-jokingly hope Trump says “Fuck it” and goes all in, refusing to play by the rules the other side has ignored for 150 years or more. If the right case gets to the SCOTUS and the ruling goes as it should, things might be changing, but the window for making real change is small and closing fast.
Such a shocker that a joo would insert him/her self into a situation to sow confusion and destruction, to discourage those that believe in the rule of law, and to humiliate those trying to do the right thing. Once is an incident. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is enemy action.
Every. Single. Fkk’n. Time.
p.s. Arthur- you’ve Got to get your AI Image Generator to understand that RATS always wear TINY HATS.
President Andrew Jackson is often quoted as saying, “John Marshall (SCOTUS) has made his decision; now let him enforce it!” While there is no concrete evidence he said it, Old Hickory did indeed ignore it. In fact it was some time before SCOTUS had any real power/influence.
The ink ratifying the Constitution hadn’t been dry 10 days before there were attempts to make it into a strong central government. And of course the 17th Amendment where the States gave up the power of Senate selection. “What a bunch of maroons”, Bugs Bunny.
Every. Single. Time.
Cue the cuckservatives screaming, “it’s because he’s liberal, not because he’s Jewish!” Except that the Venn diagram is nearly a circle.
Be done with them.
They’re not on our side.
I am pretty sure that some of the longtime congresscritters, the ones who have been there for decades, and spent that time gathering more and more power to themselves, building out their networks, and enmeshing their tentacles ever deeper into various parts of fedgov, I am pretty sure they enjoy seeing the fiction maintained that congress doesn’t have much power, and making the president the fall guy for everything.
But that aside, we live in a joke of a country with a joke of a government. My favorite part, this week, was where the judge blocked the Secretary of the Treasury from looking at treasury dept data. Why anyone should be expected to honor and obey this nonsense is above my paygrade.
Stymied by hymie. Same old shit, and activist/obstructionist judges need to be steamrolled out of existence, or we are simply pussyfooting around until the shooting starts. And that’s probably the inevitable outcome anyway, since even without these damned judges arrogating supreme power over everything to themselves, we still have scores of assholes whose ideology and beliefs are in compatible with a functional civilization. I’m tired of the endless shit tests, this is like living with a bitchy woman who is forever challenging everything a man says or tries to do. I say we skip over this part and go right to the mass graves. It’s coming anyway.
If our side doesn’t come together and get it’s act together it will be us in those mass graves just like every other time in history…Sad that we have all this knowledge and yet we just sit and let the tides of history roll over us and drown out everything that we have done and could have done…
Yes, which is what I keep telling people. But by and large they don’t listen. Had an argument with a buddy of mine who is all “rah rah America!” because he thinks Trump is kicking asses now. I try to convey to him that it looks a lot better on tv than the reality of what’s occuring, which is about to be revealed by all the obstructions being thrown into his path. He just doesn’t get that all these subversive sonsabitches are going to have to be dealt with in the harshest possibly way. It is impossible to move the needle on the way these sorts of people perceive the world around them.
“Thanks to narrow majorities, absolutely ineffective leadership especially from the GOP and a tendency to write enormous bills no one has read or can read full of vague laws, Congress seems to be mostly a bystander.”
I think that’s by intent. The legislative branch has pretty much ceded control to the bureaucracy. And then those who control the bureaucracy have the power, in fact they become the power behind the power. They can do all the shit they want and blame it on others. But in a last man standing cage match, yeah, Congress loses first.
Another site I read maintains that the Trump team is actually trolling for a really really obnoxious and poorly written temporary injunction from some mid-wit judge. They want to escalate it to the Supreme Court and get a ruling, once and for all, a true precedent, that these mid-wit low tier judges CANNOT tell a sitting President how to run his own office. Once that ruling is handed down by the most conservative Supreme Court of our lifetime (yeah, still squishy conservatives but the best we got so far), then Trump and all future Presidents can tell those mid-wit low tier judges to eat shit and die. I think this might be the one. The idiot is actually telling the President he can’t do what the Constitution specifically says is the president’s job.
You would think the judge who ruled that the Sec of the Treasury can’t look at treasury dept data would qualify as the ruling they are looking for
The Jacobin/Marxist faction of ZOG is having a fight with the Zionist wing?
Oh my, these things happen in a fourth world turd that exists only to serve Israel.
Judges outrank the preezy of the steezy (H/T-Jimmy Fallon) but muh historic pen and phone?
“The Jacobin/Marxist faction of ZOG is having a fight with the Zionist wing?”
BDT, I think you Hit the Target there. All the people who draw endless “Hierarchies of Conspiracies”, and place various Groups ‘atop the Pyramid’ are not seeing the real picture. It’s a Venn Diagram, with Greed/Money/Power at the center, and ALL the Groups that ‘Conspire’ will Back-Stab each other in an Instant if that will advance that Group. I rather doubt that the (((faction))) behind Trump is capable of “Draining the Swamp”, nor do they Want To. While to some extent, it MAY reduce the Corruption, I see it as just another attempt to ‘re-Arrange the Deck Chairs on the Titanic’, and the end result will be the same.
Everyone on Trumpenstein’s team knew exactly where the roadblocks to their plans were going in. Could it be that they’re doing this EO performance for show, knowing that most of it will be vetoed? I think so. They’ll tell their loyal MAGA idiots that they tried but the mean activist judges thwarted their gallant attempts. The ‘shit that sticks to the wall’ is all preordained and, as usual, benefits only jews and corporados. Democraps repulse the phony Republicunt tide and win big in the mid-terms. Said idiots bitch and moan, draw yet another line and proudly proclaim “That does it, we’re praying harder and votin for Vance”.
The only net increase to all this is the amount of boxcars added to the train!
And…..people say Hitler was a mean guy. Every Single Time…when I read “Englemayer” my brain immediately went to Sotomayer, etc. It really is a Tribal Thing; always the pot stir to cause dissension.
The Never Trumpers really are deranged. Some idiot at work, who is basically a box wine cat lady, is bragging about the 55 cases he is going to sue the Trump administration for because what they are doing is “illegal and unconstitutional”. Yeah, sure. On your $40,000 a year you are gonna launch a Federal lawsuit because……you are so smart. He tried to engage me in his yammering; I went back to Facebook Marketplace. Truly-I’d rather troll furniture ads than listen to this nonsense.
If you think trolling furniture ads is preferable to all this clown show, I throughly agree with you. I, personally would listen to these chicks Bragg about the tricks that they talk about making Mr. Winky hard for hours as opposed to said clown show.
I am a fossil when it comes to tech stuff–I don’t even understand how my ‘attention’ is monetized if I’m not buying anything in response to ads–and I don’t fully understand how my data is harvested, what data that is, and how much of it has been acquired.
So I would be very interested in hearing opinions on a piece by Naomi Wolf (who has been pretty effectively smeared as a crackpot but whose vocal opposition to the jabs I admired) titled “The Sack of Rome: Elon Musk’s Digital Coup,” if anyone has a chance to read it. It’s pretty lengthy.
Us kids were home-schooled.
We discussed that ThreeBranches™ nincompoopery a few times, and decided…
…Americans have TWO branches of government:
a — Armed Citizens, and
b — government agents, such as legislators, BureauOfJustifyingOurExistence, judges, military.
He has a face that says “don’t leave your kids alone with me”