American Government for the 21st Century Part II

As I was watching the Backyardigans with my daughter, I saw the Vice President's logic. You see there was a song on the show that had a chorus...."You can't go fast if you go to slow". That makes perfect sense in the double speak of Dick Cheney.... He claims executive privileges when it suits him, but does not want to be limited by the oversight that the executive branch puts upon him.

I find this confusing. As a civics teacher, I always thought that the office of the Vice Presidency was part of the Executive Branch. Maybe I was wrong. Well, the Internet allows me to pull up the U.S. Constitution at a moment’s notice. Alas, here it is:

Part of Article I section 3:

The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided.

Article II

In every case, after the choice of the President, the person having the greatest number of votes of the electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal votes, the Senate shall choose from them by ballot the Vice President.

That is a bit outdated for obvious reasons, so lets see what has changed...

Amendment 12 amending Article II of the U.S. Constitution (concerning the Executive Branch):

The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed, and if no person have a majority,

While I only took parts of both of these items, it was not in any attempt to remove the necessary context of either source. It was simply to make the blog more readable.

Even with the amendment, the office of the Vice Presidency falls within the Executive Branch. The office holder has the responsibility to perform certain duties in the Senate (cast a vote to break a tie), but that does not make the Vice Presidency part of the legislative branch of the federal government. Wait, as a teacher I have had to counsel students. Under that logic I do not need to grade papers because school counselors do not grade papers.

American Government for the 21st Century

Cleaning out my mailbox can be fun. Leave for 2 weeks and see what you find.

Midweek Funnies

This came to my Email box recently. I thought it was worth sharing....

A priest and a pastor from the local churches were standing by the road, pounding a sign into the ground, that read:

The End is Near!
Turn Yourself Around Now...
Before It's Too Late!

As a car sped past them, the driver yelled, "Leave us alone, you Religious Nuts!" From the curve they heard screeching tires and a big splash. The priest turned to the pastor and asked, "Do you think the sign should just say Bridge Out?"

What am I willing to do to save the planet?

While some Democrats are very supportive of Al Gore, I’m not one of them. He had his chance and did not succeed in becoming President. I do however appreciate his current activities in supporting the environmental movement. I want the world to be in the best condition it can be in for my daughter and generations after her.

That being said scientists are getting more and more knowledgeable about what the costs of global warming are. A British group has concluded a recent study about the costs of stabilizing greenhouse gases. Apparently, the least amount of suggested action would cost each family the equivalent of one night out at dinner per year. As a trailblazer and a progressive I hereby promise to go to Deanie's one less time each year in an effort to save the planet. That pledge is contingent on the U.S. government implementing the ideas in this study. Otherwise I’m going to east as much fried seafood and pasta as possible.

If you would like to see the article I’m talking about click here.

What is the last thing Karl Rove wants to hear?

Rural Voters Give Dems Edge

Greenberg Quinlan Rosner's e-alert brings this good news about Dem inroads into one of the GOP's more supportive constituencies:

Rural voters deliver a narrow plurality to a generic Democratic candidate for President: 46 - 43 percent. In contrast, President Bush won the rural vote in 2004 by 19 points. At the Congressional level, voters prefer Democrats in named trial heats 46 - 44 percent.

If the nascar contingent has started to leave the Grand Ole Party.... Then it might be time to start looking for the cleanup crew because the party might be ending.

For more specifics about the survey, click here.

Why did the Rove cross the road?

Karl Rove came to Louisiana recently to recruit a candidate to challenge Mary Landrieu. Does anyone admit to being a Republican in Louisiana these days? If Jindal changed his name to Long maybe he could run.

Trying to reason with Hurricane Season 2007

Today is the second day of the official hurricane season. That seems rather odd. O.K., it isn’t that odd. Every year there is a second day of hurricane season. My question to you, dear reader, is how often have both the Atlantic and Pacific already recorded two named storms this early in the season?

We just went through roughly 24 hours of rain from T.S. Barry. It was beneficial because South Florida has been under water restrictions for about a month due to a drought. Imagine that, living on the tip of a peninsula, and being in a drought. The meteorologists keep saying this weather event is actually good news. Not only is it going to relieve some of the drought conditions here, but it is expected to help fight the wildfires in north Florida and Georgia. Tell that to the people who still haven’t been able to fix their roof damage caused by Hurricane Wilma.

If you happen to be reading this in the Southwest; you are one of the few. Glad to have you aboard, tell friends and neighbors. But more to the point, you might be interested in T.S. Barbara. The National Weather Service doesn’t expect this to have any effect on the southwestern U.S., but you never know. I find this kind of scary and interesting.

President Bush just recently said he wanted to work to limit global warming.

It seems rather late in his Presidency, but you know what they say. Considering that this Administration has denied global warming for 6 plus years, this is a small step in the right direction. It might not have taken this long if Crawford, Texas was on the Gulf Coast.