Friday, November 29, 2013
Presidential Cabinet vs. White House Staff
Thursday, November 28, 2013
JFK, Obamacare and Separation of Church and State
Above, Senator John F. Kennedy as he was running for president spoke to Texas ministers on our tradition of a "Wall of Separation" between Church and State. It's a theme we revisit again this week, as the Supremes announced they have issued a Writ of Certiori to hear another judicial challenge to the Affordable Health Care Act on the grounds it violates the religious freedoms of for-profit secular companies that don't want to cover birth control in their health insurance offerings.
From the NY Times:
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear a pair of cases on whether corporations may refuse to provide insurance coverage for contraception to their workers based on the religious beliefs of the corporations’ owners.
The cases present a new challenge to President Obama’s health care law. The Supreme Court in 2012 upheld another part of the law, one that requires most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty.
The Obama administration has exempted many religious groups from the law’s requirements for contraception coverage. But it said that commercial corporations could not rely on religious objections to opt out of compliance with the law.
“Our policy is designed to ensure that health care decisions are made between a woman and her doctor,” Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. “The president believes that no one, including the government or for-profit corporations, should be able to dictate those decisions to women.”
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Blog here, your thoughts on the "Wall of Separation" in American Society. BTW, I am thankful when students post on Political Warrior. You will be thankful, too with 10 points of EC at the end of the semester.
President's Pardon Power: Thanksgiving, Presidential Tradition met by PETA protest
(From White House.gov)
We've come a long way since 11-year-old Tad Lincoln convinced his father to "adopt" a turkey named Jack in 1863.
Today, President Obama pardoned two 20-week-old, 38-pound turkeys named Popcorn and Caramel -- and announced Popcorn as the official "National Thanksgiving Turkey," after the American public weighed in on their favorites via Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
The President noted:
The competition was stiff, but we can officially declare that Popcorn is the winner -- proving that even a turkey with a funny name can find a place in politics. As for Caramel, he’s sticking around, and he’s already busy raising money for his next campaign.
And so, all "Hunger Games" references aside, both turkeys will live. Popcorn and Caramel will spend the rest of their natural days in the historic rolling pastures of Morven Park's Turkey Hill -- located at the home of former Virginia governor Westmoreland Davis in Leesburg, Virginia.
Depending on whom you ask, President Abraham Lincoln was the first to spare a turkey, when his son Tad "adopted" the bird intended for Christmas dinner and named it Jack. As President Clinton noted in a speech in 1997, "President Lincoln had no choice but to give Jack the full run of the White House."
The official annual presentation of a Thanksgiving turkey began under President Harry Truman, but there wouldn't be any official "pardoning" for several decades. According to his presidential library's documents, President Eisenhower, too, appears to have eaten the birds presented to him over the course of his two terms in office.
President Kennedy sent a particularly scrawny turkey back to the farm in 1963, saying "we'll let this one grow." (Not quite the stuff of empathetic pardons.)
It was President Ronald Reagan that issued the first "pardon" on record, when he was presented with a turkey named Charlie in 1987 -- Charlie was thereby sent to a petting zoo -- and President George H.W. Bush made the turkey pardon a permanent fixture in the American presidency.
Since then, pardoned turkeys have been sent to a variety of pastoral American venues -- from Frying Pan Park in Fairfax, Virginia, to the Disneyland Resort in California to Mount Vernon -- the home and estate of President George Washington.
As the President said today, "The Office of the Presidency -- the most powerful position in the world -- brings with it many awesome and solemn responsibilities. This is not one of them."
Popcorn and Caramel might disagree.
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And maybe further evidence of the complexities of criticism of a modern president, Obama's pardon was met by a special interest protest posted on YouTube by PETA:
Monday, November 25, 2013
Nuclear Option with Hip Hughes
(Thanks, US Gov Teacher's Blog)
Keith "Hip" Hughes is a one man flipping factory for US history and government. Above is one he just wrote on "The Nuclear Option."
Understanding the Iran Deal
NY Times has this good interactive graph to get us up to speed with what led to this weekend's nuclear deal with Iran and what will come next.
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Executive Branch & the Bureaucracy Study Guide
Roles of the president -- Chief Diplomat, Chief Legislator, Commander-in-Chief, etc.
Presidential Leadership Style -- pyramid, circular, ad hoc
Presidential Veto Power -- Line Item Veto
Stewardship Theory, Whig (or Strict Constructionalist) Theory
President's role in foreign policy v. domestic policy
Two presidencies thesis
Bully Pulpit
Coattails
War Powers Act
Executive Agreements
President's power to influence legislation
Impeachment procedures
Executive power in a presidential system vs. a parlimentary system
Executive office of the President "umbrella-like"
Imperial Presidency
Constitutional (Formal) Requirements
Informal Requirements
Formal (Expressed) Powers of the Presidency
Informal powers of the Presidency
Power of Prez. in times of crisis
Presidential electoral systems -- primaries, electoral college
Cabinet -- selection process and roles
presidential approval ratings -- first term vs. second term
Lame Duck
prez. powers granted without consent of Congress
Executive Privilege
Signing Statements
Bureaucracy -- cabinet departments, regulatory agencies, independent agencies
Managing the bureaucracy --patronage, executive leadership, merit
Bureaucratic accountability
Public opinion on bureaucracy
ID -- president's current: Chief of Staff, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Attorney General
FRQ -- Public Approval of President's over time
Broken Government? Your Job: Fix it
Mike Adams,the creator of the above cartoon, thinks things
are bad at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA):"Of all the cartoons
we've ever done on the FDA, this is the one that people seem to like the
best."
It addresses the issue of FDA conflicts of interest. The
Food and Drug Administration, an agency that suffers under the hallucination
that it protects the public from dangerous foods and drugs, has actually become
the marketing department of Big Pharma. It actually takes money from drug
companies in exchange for evaluating and approving their drugs, and the
decisions concerning which drugs to approve almost always come down to a panel
of "experts" who have strong financial ties to the very companies
impacted by their decisions.''Well, if it's "Broken Government" then it's your job to fix it.
Before you start with your poster/policy pitch assignment due Tuesday, consider this article from US History.org
http://www.ushistory.org/gov/8d.asp
(take note or the merit system and bureaucratic accountability).
EPA Chief (from last year): Enviroment should be above
partisanship. Do you agree? Also, would Richard Nixon (before Watergate) make
it in the current GOP. Afterall, it was his administration that created the EPA
in 1970. (take note or the merit system and bureaucratic accountability).
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