Crunkstitution

Will someone explain to Matthew Yglesias that not only does the Constitution not grant most of the Presidential powers he seems to think it grants, but that it also explicitly forbids most of them. I'm looking at you, Glenn.

But meanwhile, Master Y. inadvertently makes a point that I keep tyring to make, which is that the Constitution is a lousy guide to the nature of the American government. Which is not a surprise! It is a centuries-old codex that's been changed, ignored, addendized, and discarded in the two-hundred year growth of imperial government.

It is in some ways gratifying that the duller leaves of the Ivy League no longer feign surprise when the Obamatollah (as Michael Savage cheerfully named him!) arrogates to himself to right to murder American citizens as well as foreigners. It suggests a small but nevertheless evident increment of maturation in the worldview of our liberal commentariat. Yet by the same lights, it's just as fatuous as ever. I mean, ever thus, dude. Throughout history, it has been easier for rulers, leaders, monarchs, presidents, and potentates of all sorts to launch wars, crush enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations ov da vimyn than to dick around with what we now call "domestic policy," where there are always nobles and aristocrats and moneyed types and palace eunuchs and treasury officials and minor bureaucrats and so forth and so on to confound even the fiat of the Mandate of Heaven. Ours is not an atypical system at all.