Guest Blogger: Hilary B.

“The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” When I first read this line, I thought “Oh cool, that means we have a President.“ But then as Thompson pointed out it really means that all of the executive power is given to the president.
This confused me. I thought the idea of the constitution was to get as far away from a one man rule as possible. Why would they then include a “necessary and proper” clause for the president? Well as Mark pointed out, because they really can’t do much of anything else. But then we got our vocabulary list and the term of Executive Privilege and Executive Order came up. Executive Privilege -refers to the assertion made by the President or other executive branch officials when they refuse to give Congress, the courts, or private parties information or records which have been requested or subpoenaed, or when they order government witnesses not to testify before Congress (http://www.c-span.org/guide/congress/glossary/exprivilege.htm). So they can keep secrets. Executive Order is a presidential directive with the force of law. It does not need congressional approval (http://www.c-span.org/guide/congress/glossary/executiveorder.htm). And they can do stuff without the approval of congress.
So wait, isn’t this kind of going against the whole idea of checks and balances and oversight? Um yeah it is. So wait, then why is it allowed? Oh yeah, the first line of the second article of our constitution says that all this is fine and dandy.
Ok so is this a good thing? Well since our government is made up of men; not angels, it is bound to be abused. I guess your opinion would come from your faith in the integrity of mankind.