Stupid TNR Writer Shocked To Learn That Bush Is The Boss Of The Federal Government

Michelle Cottle, who I've long considered one of the dimmest bulbs in the liberal hackosphere:

Bush's latest, shameless attack on expertise.

Presidential Oversight
by Michelle Cottle
Only at TNR Online | Post date 02.02.07

Unbelievable. Just when you thought the Bush White House could not get any more arrogant, heavy-handed, imperial, and obnoxious, out comes the president's decree that, henceforth, every government agency must be overseen by a political appointee with a mandate to, as the New York Times explained it, "analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president's priorities."...

Imagine that -- the head of the executive actually thinks he can boss around his subordinates.

Incidentally, this seems to dovetail with an idea I had a few days ago. The Democrats in the Senate "reformed" the earmark system by inserting some language that earmarks shall not have the force of law. But they've never had the force of law -- they're notes in the record of spending bills which agencies by and large pass because 1) they don't want to anger appropriators and have their funds cut and 2) because it's easy -- hey, why spend a lot of time crunching the numbers of the economic impact of a spending initiative if the legislative record has already helpfully told you that the highest priority in the homeland defense bill is $40 million for the Roberty Byrd Memorial Klanorama?

But if this is the case, then it seems to me that the President hardly needs new powers of recission and so forth. He himself can end all eamarking -- by demanding that the agencies make spending decisions based upon either the voted-upon law of the land or their own internal analyses -- and not simply take Robert Byrd's suggestions diktats as binding.

And this exercise of constitutional, lawful power over Bush's bureaucratic subordinates seems to be a step in that direction.

And of course Michelle Cottle, moron, is both shocked and baffled by all of this.

posted by Ace at 05:37 PM

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