(It's also striking that both the new Benghazi revelations and the I.R.S./DoJ scandals came hard hard on the heels of Rand Paul's filibuster, which was arguably the first moment when the Obama administration faced a significant political challenge on questions of executive overreach).
There is perhaps no better time than an election year for all Americans — not just ordinary citizens, but military officials, members of Congress, and Presidential candidates, too — to consider questions of executive power, legal precedence, and America's stance in the world.
Putting aside the complicated questions of executive power, Mr. Mueller by the terms of the departmental regulations may be removed for good cause, but not by the President, but only by the "personal action" of the Attorney General.
"The article" Tom Goldstein writes, "has nothing to do with the questions of executive power that are implicated by the Bush policies -- for example, power in times of war and in foreign affairs.
The question of executive authority has also split the Justices along ideological lines, but with unpredictable implications for the current case.
Here's a gift for Theresa May as she attempts to solve the troubling question of executive pay: a 10-point plan.
Officially, Paul's filibuster was devoted to a specific question of executive power — whether there are any limits on the president's authority to declare American citizens enemy combatants and deal out death to them.
Whether a more extreme immigration and foreign policy would ever clear a 60-vote hurdle in the Senate is another matter of course, but Democrats could quickly find the tables are turned on them over the question of executive action.
He has struggled to put behind him what he has called the "legacy issues" of his predecessors, while the forthcoming report of the Public Accounts Committee is bound to put the spotlight firmly back onto the question of executive pay-offs and the costly Digital Media Initiative.
