There is no mystery to the why. The why is power. The why is always power.
The warning God instructed Samuel to give the Israelites prior to anointing Saul as king (1 Samuel 8:10-18) is just as applicable to us today. When people aspire to be in government they aspire to possess power.
This is the nature of people. This is the inevitability of government.
This is why Henry David Thoreau concluded that the best government "governs not at all."
The solution is to prune the federal government back to its proper Constitutional dimensions, from there shrinking government at all levels of society to an absolute minimum. This We The People must require of government, its shrinkage to the least achievable.
If requiring should fail, We The People must stand ready to compel.
I agree w Gbill…you are one smart cookie and I always appreciate your perspective.
It makes sense that you came down where you did. You’re right that presidents have used emergency powers and broad tariff language before, and cases like Yoshida show courts are willing to interpret that generously. Looking at Nixon’s 10% surcharge and the way the government defended it, it’s easy to see Trump’s move as part of a long line of strong‑executive trade actions, not some wild new overreach. If you start from the premise that emergencies justify flexible tools and that Yoshida approved that logic, then Roberts’ opinion can feel like the Court suddenly changing the rules.
Where I’d push back is on treating that earlier history as a permanent blank check. Yoshida was about a different statute, in a very specific, time‑limited situation, and Congress reacted afterward by writing more precise trade laws and narrowing peacetime emergency powers. That’s a big signal that broad, one‑off emergency readings are NOT supposed to silently carry over into every later statute. From a Madison‑leaning perspective (I am definitely in the Madisonian camp, here), the Court is doing something healthy (as I’ve stated before): itks self-correcting. It’s saying “tariffs and taxes are Congress’s lane, and if Congress wants to hand a president an open‑ended global tariff power, it has to say so clearly.”
So I respect the logic that got you to your conclusion—strong executive, real precedent, real emergencies—and also believe this decision is a needed course‑correction that puts trade and tax policy back where the Constitution parked them: in Congress.
The problem with the Roberts ruling in Learning Resources is that the IEEPA is neither more precise nor narrower. Quite the contrary: aside from increased lip service to Congressional oversight, the IEEPA uses structurally the same language to extend structurally the same authorities granted under the TWEA. It is really just the TWEA for peacetime, and that is far less of an oversimplification than we would typically believe.
We do well to remember that, with respect to tariffs, and any delegation of Congressional authority, there are two parallel issues involved. There is the law and there is the policy.
The premise of the Supreme Court, dating back to 1803's Marbury v Madison, is that the courts say what the law is. By extrapolation we should realize that this is different from saying what the law should be—that is the realm of policy, and the purview of Congress.
Frankly, I am unpersuaded the IEEPA, the TWEA, or the National Emergencies Act are constitutional. If Roberts had simply ruled the TWEA and IEEPA were unconstitutionally overbroad, I probably would have agreed with him. If he had deconstructed Yoshida and declared it wrongly decided, I might have agreed with that as well.
Roberts did not decide either of those, and his ruling suffers for that lack.
the supreme black robes have ignored both constitutional and congressional law in favor of their own "interpretations" of the law for a very long time.
like how they created the farce of Qualified Immunity in 1967 to protect government employees from legal consequence for breaking the law while on the job.
I’ll bet that if you counted up all the times in the past three years I have called you “brilliant” it would be fifty or sixty times, Peter. If you looked up the word “brilliant “ in the dictionary, there would be a picture of you. What an amazing mind for analyzing legal matters!
It is disgusting what is happening with our judicial branch today. The checks and balances are broken. Now ask yourself, why?
There is no mystery to the why. The why is power. The why is always power.
The warning God instructed Samuel to give the Israelites prior to anointing Saul as king (1 Samuel 8:10-18) is just as applicable to us today. When people aspire to be in government they aspire to possess power.
This is the nature of people. This is the inevitability of government.
This is why Henry David Thoreau concluded that the best government "governs not at all."
The solution is to prune the federal government back to its proper Constitutional dimensions, from there shrinking government at all levels of society to an absolute minimum. This We The People must require of government, its shrinkage to the least achievable.
If requiring should fail, We The People must stand ready to compel.
You are absolutely correct and the further we have gone from our Constitution, the more corrupt and power hungry those in power have become.
We have along road ahead of us brother, but God will see us through!
At some point, they will probably declare the constitution unconstitutional. 😉
With these judges, I would not be surprised.
I marvel they have not already done so.
I agree w Gbill…you are one smart cookie and I always appreciate your perspective.
It makes sense that you came down where you did. You’re right that presidents have used emergency powers and broad tariff language before, and cases like Yoshida show courts are willing to interpret that generously. Looking at Nixon’s 10% surcharge and the way the government defended it, it’s easy to see Trump’s move as part of a long line of strong‑executive trade actions, not some wild new overreach. If you start from the premise that emergencies justify flexible tools and that Yoshida approved that logic, then Roberts’ opinion can feel like the Court suddenly changing the rules.
Where I’d push back is on treating that earlier history as a permanent blank check. Yoshida was about a different statute, in a very specific, time‑limited situation, and Congress reacted afterward by writing more precise trade laws and narrowing peacetime emergency powers. That’s a big signal that broad, one‑off emergency readings are NOT supposed to silently carry over into every later statute. From a Madison‑leaning perspective (I am definitely in the Madisonian camp, here), the Court is doing something healthy (as I’ve stated before): itks self-correcting. It’s saying “tariffs and taxes are Congress’s lane, and if Congress wants to hand a president an open‑ended global tariff power, it has to say so clearly.”
So I respect the logic that got you to your conclusion—strong executive, real precedent, real emergencies—and also believe this decision is a needed course‑correction that puts trade and tax policy back where the Constitution parked them: in Congress.
The problem with the Roberts ruling in Learning Resources is that the IEEPA is neither more precise nor narrower. Quite the contrary: aside from increased lip service to Congressional oversight, the IEEPA uses structurally the same language to extend structurally the same authorities granted under the TWEA. It is really just the TWEA for peacetime, and that is far less of an oversimplification than we would typically believe.
We do well to remember that, with respect to tariffs, and any delegation of Congressional authority, there are two parallel issues involved. There is the law and there is the policy.
The premise of the Supreme Court, dating back to 1803's Marbury v Madison, is that the courts say what the law is. By extrapolation we should realize that this is different from saying what the law should be—that is the realm of policy, and the purview of Congress.
Frankly, I am unpersuaded the IEEPA, the TWEA, or the National Emergencies Act are constitutional. If Roberts had simply ruled the TWEA and IEEPA were unconstitutionally overbroad, I probably would have agreed with him. If he had deconstructed Yoshida and declared it wrongly decided, I might have agreed with that as well.
Roberts did not decide either of those, and his ruling suffers for that lack.
the supreme black robes have ignored both constitutional and congressional law in favor of their own "interpretations" of the law for a very long time.
like how they created the farce of Qualified Immunity in 1967 to protect government employees from legal consequence for breaking the law while on the job.
I’ll bet that if you counted up all the times in the past three years I have called you “brilliant” it would be fifty or sixty times, Peter. If you looked up the word “brilliant “ in the dictionary, there would be a picture of you. What an amazing mind for analyzing legal matters!
You are most kind. Thanks!