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Fast, loose
Fast, looseThe meltdown of the economy pushed President Bush's approval rating below 20 percent late last week, a truly startling figure. More dismaying, even fewer folks tell pollsters that they are satisfied with the job Congress is doing.
But representatives and senators had sufficient backbone last week to edit language in Treasury Secretary Paulson's three-page outline of what he called emergency and necessary bailout legislation. In doing so, just days after the observance of Constitution Day on Sept. 17, they managed to derail a unique and actually quite frightening assault on the U.S. Constitution.
"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act...may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency," Paulson wrote in his directive to Congress.
Trouble is, that's clearly unconstitutional — and it's extremely troubling that a Cabinet member either wouldn't know that, or would choose to ignore it.
"Congress cannot delegate its oversight authority to a cabinet member, even in a time of turmoil," columnist John Nichols pointed out in left-leaning The Nation. "The opening section of the Constitution gives all...legislative authority to the House and Senate....Congress cannot cede that power in the manner that Paulson's draft plan proposed — or, for that matter, in any manner whatsoever."
This is all worth noting, but is actually just preamble to an incident in Fauquier County last week.
A resident who lives close to the proposed public-safety training center off Green Road hired an attorney with instructions to ask the courts for an injunction to delay a planning commission vote on a recommendation about the project for the board of supervisors.
Judge Herman A. Whisenant quickly dismissed the request, apparently heeding county attorney Kevin Burke's argument that such a move would be unprecedented. The planning commission is, after all, only an advisory body, Burke said, and an attempt to stop a group of advisers from offering their counsel doesn't really make sense.
In our venting, above, it should be abundantly clear that we think both our judicial and legislative agents should proceed cautiously when venturing into uncharted territory.
Like Paulson, the plaintiff in the local case has opened an interesting can of worms.
Among those crawling inside:
• Is it completely kosher for the board of supervisors to be deciding on a special-use permit application submitted by...the board of supervisors?
• Will we all have sufficient faith in the studies — environmental impact and noise among them — that the supervisors will initiate regarding a project they, quite clearly, want to see go forward?
• In any event, are there any merits to waiting until the supervisor level before mandating those professional studies? Can the planning commission make a logical and reasoned recommendation without them? Shouldn't the studies really be part of the commissioners' responsibility, not the superervisors'?
We have said it before, but it's worth repeating: A firing range may be a good idea, but not on the site currently under consideration, and certainly not now.
We have fairly significant questions about the need for the firing range at all, as we have expressed before. That stand hasn't been softened by what's going on all around us.
The national economy has crept close enough to collapse that our leaders in Washington are playing fast and loose with the Constitution. Our leaders in Richmond are trying to deal with a shortfall that climbed from $1 billion to $3 billion in between reports. Here at home, the revenue stream is drying up, the budget is falling apart, and jobs are threatened in both the public and private sectors.
Amid all this, were the supervisors to go forward with a plan to build a $1 million training center, their favorable ratings would make President Bush and Congress appear to be on a roll.
We're going on a diet, that's for certain. Shouldn't we start by cutting out the fat?
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