Tea at Trianon: Biden's Slide Towards an Elective Monarchy

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, February 3, 2021

Biden's Slide Towards an Elective Monarchy

From Reason:

"Ease up on the executive actions, Joe," The New York Times urged recently inaugurated President Biden last week. While supportive of the president's broadly progressive agenda, the newspaper's editorial board found his flurry of executive orders and other unilateral actions both troubling and vulnerable to easy reversal by future presidents. "This is no way to make law," the Times added.

Unfortunately, creeping rule-by-decree has become common for presidents, and Biden's impatience with the normal frustrations of the legislative process builds on the conduct of his predecessors. While partisans tend to pick sides on executive power depending on who holds the White House, the devolution of the presidency into something resembling elective monarchy should worry everybody.

Not that executive orders are supposed to be royal decrees. At their root, they are nothing more than the authority of leaders to set rules for their organizations.

"Presidents have historically utilized various written instruments to direct the executive branch and implement policy," the Congressional Research Service noted in 2014. "These include executive orders, presidential memoranda, and presidential proclamations." (Read more.)

From Washington Examiner:

Fox News host Tucker Carlson reported a former business partner of Hunter Biden's criminal defense attorney has been picked as a top Justice Department official in President Biden's new administration.

It has already been revealed that Nicholas McQuaid, a former federal prosecutor, was picked as acting chief of the Justice Department’s criminal division. Hunter Biden confirmed in early December, after his father won the 2020 election, that he was under federal investigation.

Carlson said on his show Friday night that McQuaid worked with Christopher Clark as partners at Latham & Watkins and worked on cases together right until McQuaid took the job at the Justice Department.

"On Jan. 21 of this year, the same day Nicholas McQuaid was featured in the Justice Department press release, Latham & Watkins filed a motion in court to withdraw McQuaid as an attorney [in a case] he was working on with Christopher Clark. So that means Joe Biden put at the head of the criminal division the partner of the guy his son had hired to defend him against the criminal division. Whoa," Carlson said. (Read more.)

Sansa said...: Remember last year when Biden criticized President Trump use of Executive order. Well in his first day he passed almost 19 executive orders.; February 3, 2021 at 1:20:00 PM EST