These endless appointments of czars who answer to nobody but the President raise some constitutional issues. The power of appointments is clearly defined in our constitution.

Article II – The Executive Branch, Section 2 – Civilian Power over Military, Cabinet, Pardon Power, Appointments

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution carefully and deliberately to deny absolute power to emanate from one person. That was why they required that no principal officers could exercise any power unless the U.S. Senate decided to confirm them. The Founding Fathers were specifically blocking the type of centralized power that President Obama is currently exerting.Ken Klukoswki at Townhall.com wrote in June about the perilous path that these czar appointments can lead to.

…The Constitution commands that government officers with significant authority (called “principal officers”) are nominated by the president but then are subject to a confirmation vote by the U.S. Senate. And principal officers include not only cabinet-level department heads, but go five levels deep in executive appointments, to include assistant secretaries and deputy undersecretaries.

Inferior officers are appointed either by the president, cabinet-level officers, or the courts. But even then, the Constitution specifies that only Congress can authorize the making of such appointments. For these inferior officers, only Congress can create their offices, and also specify who appoints them. And such officers are still answerable to Congress. They are subject to subpoena to testify before Congress, and Congress holds the power of the purse by making annual appropriations for their division or program.

White House officials, by contrast, cannot be compelled to appear before Congress and testify. They are alter-egos of the president himself, and as an agent of the Executive Office of the President they are entirely removed from Congress, and not answerable to Congress in any way. That was why during the Bush administration White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten, Senior Advisor Karl Rove, and Counsel Harriet Miers could not be compelled to testify to Congress when President Bush invoked executive privilege (a battle they may well have won if they pressed their case all the way to the Supreme Court). Senior presidential aides advise the president alone, and the separation of powers forbids congressional interference in that relationship.

But that’s the problem with these czars. The president can have any advisors he wants, people who privately advise him or meet with others on his behalf, but have little or no actual authority to exert government power on anyone. These czars, however, are directly dictating policy, impacting millions of lives in the way that few assistant secretaries or deputy undersecretaries do…

…Fortunately, there is a remedy. Any person on the receiving end of an order from any of these czars has standing to challenge their constitutionality in court. Any person whose pay is deemed excessive by Kenneth Feinberg, or affected by any other czar, could file a federal suit asserting that the order is an unconstitutional exercise of government power, and have a court both invalidate the order and hold that the position itself doesn’t legally exist. Then everyone could just ignore these czars, because they would simply be private citizens, without the authority to order any of us to tie our shoes.

Let the lawsuits begin.

A truly brilliant path towards energy independence. I’m sure glad that while President Obama continues to search for ways to bankrupt our nation, he finds the time to spend more of our tax dollars on programs that have little benefit to the taxpayers that are funding them.

The Wall Street Journal

The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil’s Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil’s planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.

The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a “preliminary commitment” letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas.

This come on top of the Congress introducing legislation to permanently ban drilling in ANWR, the Obama Administration backing a nuclear energy program for the UAE, banning offshore drilling here off the U.S. coast, scrapping oil and gas leases in Utah, stopping the nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain (effectively killing future nuclear plant construction), and forming a joint task force to help Pakistan’s energy crisis. h/t Gateway Pundit

And a new twist has emerged in this story as reported by Ed Morrissey at Hot Air.

Who else besides Obama has taken an interest in Petrobras?  Hmmmmmm:

His New York-based hedge-fund firm, Soros Fund Management LLC, sold 22 million U.S.-listed common shares of Petrobras, as the Brazilian oil company is known, according to a filing today with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Soros bought 5.8 million of the company’s U.S.-traded preferred shares.

Soros is taking advantage of the spread between the two types of U.S.-listed Petrobras shares, said Luis Maizel, president of LM Capital Group LLC, which manages about $4 billion. The common shares were 21 percent more expensive than preferred today, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. …

Petrobras preferred shares have also a 10 percent additional dividend, said William Landers, a senior portfolio manager for Latin America at Blackrock Inc.

“Given that there will most likely never be a change in control in the company, I see no reason to pay a higher price for the common shares.” Brazil’s government controls Petrobras and has a majority stake of voting shares.

This story is from last Friday.  Is it a coincidence that Obama backer George Soros repositioned himself in Petrobras to get dividends just a few days before Obama committed $2 billion in loans and guarantees for Petrobras’ offshore operations?

h/t American Thinker

Mr. President, I just read your op-ed in the New York Times.  You must either be incredibly ignorant (e.g., pediatricians performing tonsillectomies, surgeons being paid $50,000 for an amputation), or else you believe that Americans are incredibly stupid.

You justify a hasty and massive healthcare “reform” to save money, by spending an additional trillion dollars.  You would fix a “broken” and broke Medicare system by adding another 47 million beneficiaries to government programs while arguing this will reduce overall costs.

I’ve itemized your inaccurate claims, with my comments in italics.

You assert that your healthcare reform will:

• Force insurance companies to insure pre-existing conditions. That’s like allowing bettors to wait till after the race has been run, to place their bets. That won’t cut costs.
• Eliminate lifetime limits on coverage. Unlimited lifetime coverages must increase premiums to pay for them and will raise total costs.
• Require insurance companies to pay for routine examinations, preventive care, and screening tests like mammograms and colonoscopies. Once again, how can you be insured against a sure thing? The only way my company can pay for a colonoscopy is to add enough onto the premium to pay for it, plus their overhead.
• Make Medicare more efficient, so tax dollars won’t enrich insurance companies. Insurance companies do not derive income from Medicare, because it is a federal program. Incidentally, its costs per patient have increased much faster than private insurance.
• Cut hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and inefficiency in federal health programs like Medicare and Medicaid. These programs have been in effect over 40 years — and I’ve seen the waste and inefficiency for most of that interval. Did you just find out about the waste and inefficiency now, and why hasn’t something already been done about it?

You claim that:

• “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” But didn’t you just imply this week that Medicare Advantage subsidizes insurance companies and should be eliminated to save money?
• “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” But large numbers of doctors have indicated that they will quit or retire if this plan is enacted
• “You will not be waiting in any lines.” Maybe you won’t but we will. Your plan will add up to 47 million new insureds, with no increase in the supply of primary care physicians that are already in short supply.

We physicians live with our healthcare system, all day and every day.  We care about being able to heal.  We hate disputing with insurance companies, and especially with government bureaucrats.  Certainly changes in insurance practices are needed, and would have occurred long ago, absent a government record of 60 years of meddling with the market.

As you say, “…let’s disagree over issues that are real, and not wild misrepresentations” such as those in your op-ed, “that bear no resemblance to anything that anyone has actually proposed.”

And I agree, this is about America’s future:  whether Americans will remain free, or be ruled by an increasingly intrusive and authoritarian statist government.

G. Wesley Clark, MD