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Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski
Our Supreme Court is elected, and technically not affiliated with a party (although nominated by a party). The real hold up was the legislature that would have been needed to approve her actions.
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True if you assume that the statute (which, again, had been around for decades) was unconstitutional, which was the question for the court. But that was the question. If you just look at the law on the books, she very arguably had the authority to do what she did.
This is not the first time that Republicans have invented new constitutional theories about what the government can't do in order to thwart a Democratic executive acting to solve a problem that everyone gets is a problem. Hello Obamacare.
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It is R and would not do it. So she was acting as a dictator.
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I'm sorry, that's crazy. She acted according to laws that had been on the books for a long time. How does that make her a dictator?
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And there were large parts of the state with few cases that she shut down. In a good light the R wouldn't approve because she was asking for overbroad restrictions.
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She wasn't asking for anything. The legislature, long ago, gave the governor the power to do certain things. She saw a problem, and used those powers. They disagreed on policy grounds -- and, hey, maybe they were right! -- and interpreted the state constitution in a way to scrap the statutes.
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In a bad light they wouldn't approve because the loons who hated the restrictions vote for them. But either way, she had no authority to just keep stuff shut down. Are you saying you want to see an example of an executive who can't get stuff done through Congress start bypassing it and just ordering stuff?
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That's not exactly right. There was a facially plausible argument that the legislature had already given her that authority, in the Emergency Powers of Governor Act of 1945 and he Emergency Powers Act of 1976. The Court decided that the 1945 law was unconstitutional because it was an unlawful delegation of legislative power to the executive.
Either way, that's *not* an executive who can't get stuff done through Congress and is bypassing it and ordering stuff.
