Friday, October 15, 2010

Presidential Authority

For the past year and more several writers have been insisting that the President can suspend DADT “with the stroke of a pen” and I have been trying to find out what they believe is the basis of his supposed authority to do that, given that it is a law passed by Congress. None has responded to comments on their blogs, or to emails.

I did get a response from another reader to one of my comments, but the reference he gave me turned out to be an executive order issued by President Bush. Citing a presidential directive as the source of a presidential power strikes me as circular reasoning, so that didn’t satisfy my question.

A day or so ago Obama said at a town hall that, because this is a law passed by Congress, "this is not a situation where I can, by the stroke of a pen, end this policy." People tend to credit Obama with knowing what he’s talking about, so now I think I know why those bloggers never responded to my question.

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