Lessig Campaign and the Change Congress Movement

GoldenShale wrote a follow up to last week's discussion about Lessig running for congress. He writes "Larry Lessig has created a Lessig08 website, and it looks like he is getting serious about running for congress. In his introduction video he proposes the creation of a national "Change Congress" movement which would try to limit the influence of money in the electoral and legislative processes. Having a technologically savvy representative and a clear intellectual leader to head this kind of movement is exactly what we need to counter the last 8 years of corporate dominance in government."

Re:last 8 years?

[nschubach]

Well, yes. In most recent years, but the Constitution strictly grants power to declare war to Congress and the power to control that war to the President. Lately, it's been the President declaring the wars and controlling them.

last 8 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you mean the EVIL tm BUSH Administration started "8 years of corporate dominance in government."??

No better example of Slashdot bias exists than this.

Slashdot bias, you say?

[untree]

I think you're the twentieth person to point out the stupidity of the "8 years" statement, and so far I haven't seen a single comment defending it.

Slashdot != submitters;
Slashdot != article summaries;
Slashdot == user comments;

If there were really a bias, there would have been an outpouring of anti-Bush sentiments instead of people pointing out when DMCA was passed, the history of copyright extensions, and the joke about the submitter's counter being reset by Y2K.

Re:Funny, I figured this out a long time ago. . .

[King Louie]

I agree almost completely with what you say, except that your interpretation of the Constitution is deeply flawed. The Constitution clearly sets out a government whose three branches (Executive, Legislative, Judicial) are co-equals. This is apparent not only from the text of the document, but also from the Federalist Papers. The Presidency is no more supposed to be a rubber stamp of the Congress than the Congress should be a rubber stamp of the Presidency.

Each branch has different powers, but none can exercise significant power without the consent of at least one other branch. Yes, there are areas where each has latitude to act unilaterally, but major initiatives generally require the consent of at least two branches. And before you say "Bush went to war on his own," recall that Congress has the power to limit or end funding for the war whenever it wants to. It may not have the will, but it has the power.

The only branch of the US government that has been able to act unilaterally has been the Judicial branch, and that is a phenomenon largely of the last 50 years. Congress has declined to exercise its powers to limit the Courts' jurisdiction as granted under Article 2 of the Constitution.

Our Founders deliberately devissed a government where no one branch could accumulate too much power because they distrusted government. This is the very essence of hte Constitution's system of checks and balances -- each branch has certain powers that can nullify decisions of the other branches, and it takes at elast two branches to get most things done. Whether those powers are exercised or not, or if they are weilded responsibly when exercised, is another matter entirely.