So now President Obama has whats called "Czars" that only answer to him.



What do you think about this?

whoot whoot

Ahem, that woot will be documented, and sent directly to the woot czar mirror.

Would you like a car czar to speed you away from this situation? We have one.

oh my

Fox News Debunks Its Own Attack On President Obama’s ‘Czars’
Yesterday, Fox News breathlessly introduced “All the President’s Czars,” citing a list from Taxpayers for Common Sense of “more than 30 czars” that “do not need to be confirmed by the Senate like Cabinet secretaries do.”

Fox’s Jane Skinner asked “where the oversight is” and “if it is really actually constitutional.” But Fox correspondent Wendell Goler demolished the “czar” attack in the segment, explaining that the existence of Presidential advisers like these “go back as far as FDR, and maybe further,” that “there is no constitutional issue,” and that many of these “czars” are “confirmed by the Senate.” He reminds Skinner that the Bush administration officials were famously unaccountable:

The one complaint from critics is that they can’t compel some of the czars to come to Capitol Hill and testify. That’s a relatively small number. In fact, it would include people like the national security adviser. When she was national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice declined a Senate invitation, a Senate subpoena to come and testify about the evidence of Iraq’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. But frankly, few czars would decline an invitation. And others are actually, like the drug czar, are confirmed by the Senate, and would have to testify if they were invited, Jane.


In fact, the “czars” displayed by Fox News include at least eight Senate-confirmed positions, from “intelligence czar” Dennis Blair to “border czar” Alan Bersin. “Regulatory czar” Cass Sunstein is yet to begin working, victim of a Republican hold on his confirmation. John Holdren, depicted falsely by the right wing as a “science czar” who favors “forced abortions,” is the Senate-confirmed presidential science advisor. One “czar” — Elizabeth Warren — is actually chair of a Congressional oversight panel. The debate over the role of unconfirmed Presidential advisers reaches back to 1832, with critics accusing President Andrew Jackson of running a “Kitchen Cabinet” in place of the official one.

Transcript:

SKINNER: Already, President Obama has named more than 30 czars, as they’re called, people to help out with everything from securing the border, fixing the auto industry — There’s a picture of them. Look at all of them! Much of this work was assigned to Cabinet secretaries in previous administrations. These czars, it’s important to know, do not need to be confirmed by the Senate like Cabinet secretaries do. And now even some prominent Democrats are asking where the oversight is and if it is really actually constitutional. Wendell Goler has been looking into this for us. Wendell, are they constitutional?

GOLER: Jane, some critics claim that the czars violate article two, section two of the Constitution, giving the Senate power to advise on nominations and execute nominations. But if that’s the case, presidents have been ignoring that part of the Constitution back as far as FDR, and maybe further. The one complaint from critics is that they can’t compel some of the czars to come to Capitol Hill and testify. That’s a relatively small number. In fact, it would include people like the national security adviser. When she was national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice declined a Senate invitation, a Senate subpoena to come and testify about the evidence of Iraq’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. But frankly, few czars would decline an invitation. And others are actually, like the drug czar, are confirmed by the Senate, and would have to testify if they were invited, Jane.

SKINNER: Huh. What do constitutional scholars say about it?

GOLER: Well, scholars like Steven Hess of the Brookings Institution say there is no constitutional issue here. They say there really is just a political issue. While you have got criticism from Democrats, including Sen. Robert Byrd, the longstanding champion of the legislative branch, who says that President Ozama’s, uh, Obama’s czars may eat into the legislative branch’s powers. Most of the criticism has come from Republicans who are out of the White House now, and complain that the czars eat into their already minority status in Congress. Georgia Republican Congressman Jack Kingston today introducing legislation that his aides say will address the issue, but it’s not likely to get far in the Democratic Congress, Jane.

Thank you boo-2-u.

Thoughts?

(WOW I feel like the hookery looking female reporter with wayy too much makeup, and absoloutely the wrong attire, completely out of place, and inexperienced, in a locker room interviewing players, at a Raiders game.)

*puts mic wayy too close to your face*

My thoughts? This early in the morning? What are you crazy?

Oh, yeah, the 30 something political science major... good luck changing your own oil on the first ride that guy pimps.

Just a thought, perhaps these folks taking the "Czar" positions should go read some Russian history and see what kind of luck those Czars had.

USA only got "Czars" since Obama became a president. I don't remember anyone referred to as a "czar" in US history before.

Ill put a fresh pot on for ya tomorrow.

There is a name for people like you!

They are called ... "The Best".

In the 70s, Obama's Science Adviser Endorsed Giving Trees Legal Standing to Sue in Court
Thursday, July 30, 2009
By Christopher Neefus




(CNSNews.com) – Since the 1970s, some radical environmentalists have argued that trees have legal rights and should be allowed to go to court to protect those rights.

The idea has been endorsed by John P. Holdren, the man who now advises President Barack Obama on science and technology issues.

Giving “natural objects” -- like trees -- standing to sue in a court of law would have a “most salubrious” effect on the environment, Holdren wrote the 1970s.

“One change in (legal) notions that would have a most salubrious effect on the quality of the environment has been proposed by law professor Christopher D. Stone in his celebrated monograph, ‘Should Trees Have Standing?’” Holdren said in a 1977 book that he co-wrote with Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich.

“In that tightly reasoned essay, Stone points out the obvious advantages of giving natural objects standing, just as such inanimate objects as corporations, trusts, and ships are now held to have legal rights and duties,” Holdren added.

According to Holdren and the Ehrlichs, the notion of legal standing for inanimate objects would not be as unprecedented as it might sound. “The legal machinery and the basic legal notions needed to control pollution are already in existence,” they wrote.

“Slight changes in the legal notions and diligent application of the legal machinery are all that are necessary to induce a great reduction in pollution in the United States,” Holdren added.

Holdren, who is the new director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and President Obama’s top science advisor, made the comments in the 1977 book “Ecoscience: population, resources, environment.”

Stone’s article -- “Should Trees Have Standing?” -- which Holdren called a “tightly reasoned essay,” was published in the Southern California Law Review in 1972.

There the author plainly states: “I am quite seriously proposing that we give legal rights to forests, oceans, rivers and other so-called ‘natural objects’ in the environment – indeed, to the natural environment as a whole.”

Stone admits in the article that it may seem improbable to give legal rights to nonhuman objects, but likened it to finally giving rights to black Americans.

“The fact is, that each time there is a movement to confer rights onto some new ‘entity,’ the proposal is bound to sound odd or frightening or laughable,” Stone wrote.

“This is partly because until the rightless (sic) thing receives its rights, we cannot see it as anything but a thing for the use of ‘us’ – those who are holding rights at the time . . . Such is the way the slave South looked upon the black.”

The decades-old standing argument has seen a resurgence in recent months in connection with a major piece of global-warming legislation -- the cap-and-trade bill -- that recently passed the U.S. House of Representatives.

Environmental advocacy groups such as the Center for Earth Jurisprudence have begun citing the argument. Mary Munson, legal director for that organization, says she does not quite subscribe to Stone’s analogy on the slave South, but she does agree with him in principle.

“In our legal system, (Stone is) actually saying that rights are something that (are) little-by-little discovered, and in that sense, I’m agreeing with him in that there are rights that exist and we’re just trying to discover what they are,” she said.

Munson explained animals have already come part of the way toward a set of rights.

“(In) the animal rights movement, there have been successful cases where people have upheld animals’ right not to be tortured. And I think a lot of people would agree that animals do have that kind of a right. So it’s just a matter of finding out what are those inherent rights that nature may have.”

“Courts are there to uphold laws,” she told CNSNews.com, “and you don’t bring a lawsuit unless a law has been violated." In cases where there's "been injury because somebody’s overstepped" an object's legal boundaries, a lawyer could sue on behalf of the injured nonhuman object.

“(I)t will have to be a human lawyer that would bring the lawsuit, but just on behalf of the injured party and the injured party would be an animal or something.”

The White House did not comment on questions from CNSNews.com about Holdren’s stance on legal standing for natural objects -- and whether it has changed since the 1970s.

Before joining the Obama administration, Holdren was a professor at Harvard and the director of the Woods Hole Research Center in Falmouth, Mass. He holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University and an M.S. from MIT, where he also received his undergraduate degree.