mr smith has titled this essay: the imperial presidency and as you read you may discover things you hadn't known about all of 'our' government;

Regardless of who holds the office, America's Imperial Project and its Imperial Presidency are due for a grand reckoning.

While elections and party politics generate the emotions and headlines, the truly consequential change in American governance has been the ascendancy of the Imperial Presidency over the past 75 years, since the end of World War II.

As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the Constitution grants the President extraordinary but temporary powers in wartime. With the power to declare war granted solely to Congress, this dangerous (in the Founders' view) expansion of Executive power was tolerated because it was temporary and necessary in the fast-moving emergency of war.

Congress has declared war a total of five times, while U.S. armed forces have been deployed in conflicts 300 times. So in 295 conflicts out of 300, the president had sole discretion. Various stamps of Congressional approval of these wartime powers have been given over the decades, but these are more for show than actual limits on presidential powers.

The extraordinary powers granted to President Roosevelt in World War II did not expire at the end of the war. Rather, the powers of the presidency expanded along with the National Security agencies which rose to unprecedented power in the Cold War era of 1945 - 1991. The entire alphabet soup of the National Security State--CIA, NSA, DIA, etc.--serve the president, not Congress, which has been relegated the role of toothless oversight.

Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.'s 1973 book, The Imperial Presidency , introduced the term Imperial Presidency into the American lexicon.

While historians have documented the rise of Executive power at the expense of the legislative branch and pundits have wrung their hands over this concentration of vast, often secret power in the presidency, nobody within the status quo has addressed the core reason behind the rise of the Imperial Presidency: America's Empire requires a CEO/Emperor as a simple operational reality.........read more......