Paul Ryan: I'm tired of divided government

“I’m tired of divided government. It doesn’t work very well,” Ryan said. “We’re just at loggerheads. We’ve gotten some good things done. But the big things — poverty, the debt crisis, the economy, health care — these things are stuck in divided government, and that’s why we think a unified Republican government’s the way to go.”

Acer wrote:
He's got a point. The last time we had a unified Republican government, we accomplished a lot of things. Stopping balancing budgets, invading two countries and passing Medicare Part D with no power to negotiate drug prices are a few that come to mind.

Acer wrote:
He's got a point. The last time we had a unified Republican government, we accomplished a lot of things. Stopping balancing budgets, invading two countries and passing Medicare Part D with no power to negotiate drug prices are a few that come to mind.

Paul Ryan: I'm tired of divided government

“I’m tired of divided government. It doesn’t work very well,” Ryan said. “We’re just at loggerheads. We’ve gotten some good things done. But the big things — spreading poverty, worsening the debt crisis, sinking the economy, eliminating health care — these things are stuck in divided government, and that’s why we think a unified Republican government’s the way to go.”

Onamuji wrote:

Paul Ryan: I'm tired of divided government

“I’m tired of divided government. It doesn’t work very well,” Ryan said. “We’re just at loggerheads. We’ve gotten some good things done. But the big things — spreading poverty, worsening the debt crisis, sinking the economy, eliminating health care — these things are stuck in divided government, and that’s why we think a unified Republican government’s the way to go.”

deckeda wrote:
Yes, conservatives should really be given free reign to trample civil rights ....

Abraham Lincoln illegally suspended the core liberty of habeas corpus without Congressional approval. Wilson's attacks on basic free speech in the name of national security were indeed legion and probably unparalleled. Franklin Roosevelt oversaw the due-process-free internment of more than 100,000 law-abiding Japanese-Americans into concentration camps.

And then there are the two War on Terror presidents. George Bush seized on the 9/11 attack to usher in radical new surveillance and detention powers in the PATRIOT ACT, spied for years on the communications of US citizens without the warrants required by law, and claimed the power to indefinitely imprison even US citizens without charges in military brigs.

His successor, Barack Obama, went further by claiming the power not merely to detain citizens without judicial review but to assassinate them (about which the New York Times said: "It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing"). He has waged an unprecedented war on whistleblowers, dusting off Wilson's Espionage Act of 1917 to prosecute more then double the number of whistleblowers than all prior presidents combined. And he has draped his actions with at least as much secrecy, if not more so, than any president in US history.....

Ultimately, there are two critical factors that, for me at least, are highly influential if not decisive in determining the proper ranking. The first is the extent to which the civil liberties abuses are temporary or permanent....

As John Jay wrote in Federalist 4, "absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal" (that's also why the absurd contortions invoked by President Obama to fight a war in Libya not only in the absence of Congressional approval, but in the face of formal Congressional disapproval, belongs high on the list of his worst and likely most enduring civil liberties assaults).

But in terms of the role played by war in enabling civil liberties assaults, at least the exploited wars are usually real. In the case of the "War on Terror", it is far more illusory and frivolous than real. That - along with their permanence - is a major factor in determining where the civil liberties erosions of the last decade, and the presidents responsible for them, rank in history.

max wrote:

Interesting that you had no problem with seven years of our civil rights being trampled by the worse president when it comes to civil liberties, as if it never happened .....