Congressional Overstep

Fire of Liberty

As I listened to some of the Sunday morning news shows today and recall the madness that seems to be emerging from the continual hearings and media speculation about the President's asking the NSA to keep track of al Qaeda's communications with various individuals in this nation, I'm a little disheartened to see certain members of Congress are so upset that the President is leading our fight in this war and keeping them out of the loop(Well the Prez seems to backing down by expanding the need to know list from 8 to around 80 - anyone remember that saying about too many cooks or loose lips)that they're willing to erase all aspects of "secret" for their own egos and to be a white knight for the Civil Liberties crowd. The only problem is that the folks in Congress who are harping that they need greater control of the President's war-fighting abilities or want to hand it over to some judge need to turn towards Alexander Hamilton and The Federalist Papers and they'd realize that they don't have much authority in controlling his actions (during the GWOT) except maybe cutting off the money. Thankfully, Mackubin Thomas Owens, associate dean of academics and professor at the Naval War College, has a good piece over at National Review Online that pretty much sums up Hamilton's great understanding of the US Constitution. Take a look:

A crucial instrument of Hamilton's strategic sobriety was a government capable of taking action when confronted by a threat. He firmly believed that the Constitution could not logically become an instrument in its own destruction. Hamilton makes this point most clearly in Federalist 23:

These powers ought to exist without limitations, because it is impossible to be foreseen or define the extent and variety of national exigencies, or the correspondent extent and variety of the means which may be necessary to satisfy them. The circumstances that endanger he safety of nations are infinite and for this reason, no constitutional shackles can wisely be imposed on the power to which the care of it is committed. This power ought to be co-extensive with all the possible combinations of such circumstances; and ought to be under the direction of the same councils which are appointed to preside over the common defense.

. . . the means ought to be proportional to the end; the persons from whose agency the attainment of any end is expected, ought to possess the means by which it is to be attained.

The key to exercising the power described here is a strong executive. In Federalist 70, Hamilton wrote:

There is an idea, which is not without its advocates, that a vigorous Executive is inconsistent with the genius of republican government. The enlightened wellwishers to this species of government must at best hope that the supposition is destitute of foundation, since they can never admit its truth without at the same time admitting the condemnation of their own principles. Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.


Hamilton gives as his primary reason for this claim that "[the executive power] is essential to the protection of the community from foreign attacks."

Hamilton believed that the president, as the only official elected by the people as a whole, had not only the constitutional but the moral responsibility to act on their behalf — in the interest of the salus populi. Hamilton rejected the claim that republican government required the executive branch's "servile compliancy" to the legislative. The executive possesses his own constitutionally based power and is not, as some people seem to argue today, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Congress or at least "a kind of independent agency under the ultimate control of Congress."

For the sake of our nation, maybe the folks manning one of the three branches of government should read their constitution and copy of The Federalist Papers. Al Qaeda isn't going to call it quits anytime soon and we shouldn't help them out by removing one more tool from our arsenal.