"Complete Breakdown of Constitutional Government"

A friend wrote me recently. "What we are seeing is the "complete breakdown of constitutional government in Obama's America."

Jagor's response:

The "complete breakdown of constitutional government in America" certainly did not begin in Obama's administration. It goes back many decades.  

When I was studying political science as an undergraduate, there was almost no discussion of the legislative branch at all. The only required texts books I can remember using as were about the presidency and the Supreme Court.  It was as if the legislative branch didn't even exist.  

Yet, to the framers of the Constitution, the legislative branch--the Congress--is the People's house and, as such, is the most important branch of the three, the first among equals.  For example, Congress has the power to impeach and convict executive branch officials up to and including the president as well as Federal judges and justices of the Supreme Court, but Congress cannot impeach its own members.  A separate section of the Constitution, Article I, Section 5, Clause 2, describes the procedures for the Senate and the House of Representatives to expell members.

The Supreme Court was virtually powerless, heard few cases and didn't even have a home of its own until Marbury v. Madison in 1803, which improperly implemented the unconstitutional doctrine of judicial review--that a handful of unelected kings--and now queens--of the Supreme Court could overturn the will of the American people as expressed by their elected representatives in Congress.  

Thomas Jefferson expressed his outrage with the decision, writing to Justice Marshall, "You seem to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy."

The framers of the Constitution didn't even bother to specify the number of justices on the Supreme Court: the number is determined by the People's representatives in the Congress.  Originally, in 1789, there were six justices--one Chief Justice of the United States and five associate justices, but since then the number varied from 5 to 10.  Congress fixed the number at nine in 1869.

As for the president, the framers wanted his job to be as a managing director of a federal bureaucracy and the diplomatic corps and to serve as commander in chief of the Armed Forces, but only obeying the orders of Congress. That's why they specified that only Congress can declare war. 

But the last time Congress declared war was in1941, and presidents now have arrogated to themselves the tyrannical power to send troops or bomb foreign countries as they please, with or without the consent of the People's representatives.  Therefore the case can be made that every war, "police action," invasion, bombardment and drone strike since 1941 has been unconstitutional, if not necessarily illegal.