How the left will learn to stop worrying and love executive power

Congress works slowly, and our issue is really important, so the question is, to what extent can we short-circuit the system using executive orders? No, it's not the Yoo memorandum that floated around last week, it's

a new study from a team of researchers at the University of Colorado law school, who worked full time for nearly six months on a project that could help the next U.S. president make sweeping climate-change policies -- fast. The new report probes the edges of executive orders and lays out the authority the next president could use to introduce global-warming policies without waiting for legislation to wind its way through the notoriously slow congressional machine.

The story's here; the report's here. As Glen puts it, Unprecedented executive authority -- Bad when it's used to fight terrorists, but good when it's used to fight "global warming!"

I will confess that I have not yet read the 213-page document, so this post is rather thin. Funnily enough, the Boston Globe asked the candidates their views on executive power not long ago (remember my gaffe and subsequent mea culpa? I again extend public apologies to Chalie Savage for that snafu). For example: Asked if the President has power to attack Iran without Congressional authorization, Barack Obama said that "the President does have a duty to protect and defend the United States." Well, obviously, climate change is a threat to the United States. If there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that the United States is under attack by the climate. The Supreme Court's already told us that much, in accepting speculated loss of coastal land as an injury in Massachusetts v. EPA (in a subsequent lawsuit arising from the exercise of executive orders outlined in this report, Justice Kennedy will perhaps call the contending sides of a national controversy to end our international division by accepting a common mandate rooted in the IPCC report). So obviously Obama's earlier remarks don't foreclose such use of executive authority. He waffled on signing statements too, leaving plenty of room to continue to use them as the Bush administration has done.

Related:
Power flows down, responsibility flows up | Is there some value to Hillary winning, in this sense?

Post facto:

First act of new Clinton Administration: Reverse first act of old Clinton Administration (4/7/08)
Ten things that aren't changing (11/5/08)
On the other side of the web today (12/16/08)