Nancy Pelosi, in Congress since 1987

Harry Reid, Senator since 1987, in Congress 1983-1986

Barney Frank, in Congress since 1981

Chris Dodd, Senator since 1981, in Congress 1975-1890

Henry Waxman, in Congress since 1975

Charles Rangel, in Congress since 1971

Robert Byrd, Senator since 1959

Charles Shumer, Senator since 1999, in Congress 1981-1998

Can we look forward to "George’s Ganja" at some point as the update of Billy Beer?

Now, one obvious point should be made here: the easy House passage of the stimulus bill shows that Obama doesn’t need a honeymoon. He has the votes. For now.

To wit: if we take seriously the contention that what really ended the Great Depression was ramping up for World War II, then why aren’t those who are willing to throw everything but the kitchen sink at our economic malaise (a word appropriately borrowed from the Jimmy Carter era) also willing to throw the kitchen sink, in this case, an expansion of our armed forces?

What better way to create government-funded jobs than to do this? People have guaranteed employment, they learn skills and develop habits of discipline that, later on, will serve them well in the civilian world, and they serve the national interest articulated so intransigently by President Obama in his Inaugural Address. What’s more, those likeliest to enlist are those who are most economically at risk.

And while we’re at it, let’s expand the array of opportunities for folks to get an education by expanding the ROTC program.

For those who care about the substance of President Obama’s position on abortion and family planning, this is moderately--very moderately--good news. The money will come back, and may even remain in the stimulus bill, but not with the, er, blessing of the President. Of course, he won’t refuse to sign the bill if the money is there, so don’t go overboard in your gratitude for President Obama’s gesture.

I argue that we can’t afford to go down a single path. We did that in the 1950s and our adversaries found "work-arounds." I also maintain that this can’t be simply an issues left to the services. The Army created a force structure after Vietnam that hamstrung the executive power. Unfortunately, for reasons having to do with space, a very important paragraph was dropped from the final version.

"Constraints on executive power may very well be a good and necessary thing, but it is not a decision for the Army-or any other uniformed military service-to make on its own. Statements by some of the traditionalists indicate that they see their enterprise as a similar way of limiting the use of US military power by deemphasizing the capabilities necessary for intervening in small wars."

Americans don’t feel free to reach inside themselves and make a difference. The growth of litigation and regulation has injected a paralyzing uncertainty into everyday choices. All around us are warnings and legal risks. The modern credo is not "Yes We Can" but "No You Can’t." Our sense of powerlessness is pervasive. Those who deal with the public are the most discouraged. Most doctors say they wouldn’t advise their children to go into medicine. Government service is seen as a bureaucratic morass, not a noble calling. Make a difference? You can’t even show basic human kindness for fear of legal action. Teachers across America are instructed never to put an arm around a crying child.

The idea of freedom as personal power got pushed aside in recent decades by a new idea of freedom -- where the focus is on the rights of whoever might disagree. Daily life in America has been transformed. Ordinary choices -- by teachers, doctors, officials, managers, even volunteers -- are paralyzed by legal self-consciousness. Did you check the rules? Who will be responsible if there’s an accident? A pediatrician in North Carolina noted that "I don’t deal with patients the same way any more. You wouldn’t want to say something off the cuff that might be used against you."

Update: By way of connecting Howard’s point to the question of the size and scope of government, Megan McArdle explains where the rules come from:

Private web development is far--far, far, far, FAR--from perfect, of course. But government IT is worse than, IMHO, it has to be. It’s not, as some conservatives would have it, that government professionals are inherently incompetent.

It’s that government systems treat them as if they are incompetent. That a) selects for the actually incompetent and b) insures that change or creativity are near-impossible. This is because we treat every issue not as problems for agencies to work on, but something that must be covered by A RULE. You cannot trust the Social Security Administration to care whether disabled people have access, so you have to mandate it. And if that clumsily drawn mandate cuts off ten other features that would help people access social security information, well . . . DIDN’T YOU SEE THERE’S A RULE????!!!

P.S. I don’t actually know any conservatives who think the way McArdle suggests. It might be true, however, that certain people seem to say that because one does not always have time to provide the full explanation.

There are certainly people who believe that. They’re the ones who applauded the President’s revealingly quick move to lift the so-called global gag rule, just in time for Sanctity of Life Sunday.

President Obama’s vaunted common ground amounts to this: you can have fewer abortions if you support those who (like him) often regard pregnancy as a punishment.

Ever since civil service laws were created, Presidents have struggled to find a way to get employees that they cannot fire to do their jobs in general, and to do them as the President would like in particular. But the trend was increased in the Progressive era when belief in checks and balances was thrust aside an the rule of experts was embraced.

Many Progressives were fond of the idea that the best governent was that of a benevolent dictator. Beyond that, in the early 20th century the social science PhD was young, and Progressives had faith that modern social scientists would find the right answer to tough questions by dilligent investigation and study. Hence the American constitutional system of checks and balances was seen as an anachronism, a legacy from the 18th century that needed to be jettisoned. Combie the two, and you have a real problem.

Michael Uhlmann did a good job describing the problem in a recent essay in the Claremtont Review of Books. In particular, he quotes Gary Lawson:

This reluctance to vest the president with control has sometimes expressed itself in the form of independent agencies (independent, that is, of the president), which mock the idea of separated powers by vesting legislative, executive, and judicial functions in the same institution. Consider Boston University law professor Gary Lawson’s provocatively compelling description of the Federal Trade Commission, which typifies the workings of the system as a whole:

"The Commission promulgates substantive rules of conduct. The Commission then considers whether to authorize investigations into whether the Commission’s rules have been violated. If the Commission authorizes an investigation, the investigation is conducted by the Commission, which reports its findings to the Commission. If the Commission thinks that the Commission’s findings warrant an enforcement action, the Commission issues a complaint. The Commission’s complaint that a Commission rule has been violated is then prosecuted by the Commission and adjudicated by the Commission. This Commission adjudication can either take place before the full Commission or before a semi-autonomous Commission administrative law judge. If the Commission chooses to adjudicate before an administrative law judge rather than before the Commission and the decision is adverse to the Commission, the Commission can appeal to the Commission. If the Commission ultimately finds a violation, then, and only then, the affected private party can appeal to an Article III court. But the agency decision, even before the bona fide Article III tribunal, possesses a very strong presumption of correctness on matters both of fact and of law."

This pattern has become an accepted feature of the modern administrative state, so much so that, as Lawson notes, it scarcely raises eyebrows. Presidents and Congress long ago accommodated themselves to its political exigencies, as has the Supreme Court, which since the 1930s has never come close to questioning independent agencies’ constitutional propriety.