legislative

John Nothdurft and Donny Kendal present episode #124 of the In The Tank Podcast. Today’s podcast features work from the American Legislative Exchange Council, the James Madison Institute, and Reason.

I was huddled in a Connecticut legislative hearing room on a chilly spring morning three years ago, awaiting my chance to testify about a proposal to over-regulate e-cigarettes.

Think of the FCC, unilaterally self-armed with the “strongest possible rules” of Title II 1934 monopoly telephone regulation, as a Washington backwater “kangaroo court,” where innocent communicators can be hauled before a mock court system where normal due process, rule of law, and justice may not apply.

It was long the case that American presidents held less power on domestic issues than the Congress. The executive branch could only enact the laws of the legislature with a limited tendency to veto. The president’s real power lay in setting foreign policy, as he had much more freedom of action in that arena than on the home front wherein the checks and balances of the Constitution were in full force. That traditional balance has been overridden in the current political system. The fault for this breakdown of traditional magisteria of influence lies with both the executive and the legislative branches.