Hi George,
Your recent column, “How the Supreme Court can limit Congress’s taste for self-diminishment” called to mind one of Lord Chesterfield’s letters to his son: “ A strong mind sees things in their true proportion; a weak one views them through a magnifying medium; which, like the microscope, makes an elephant of a flea; magnifies all little objects, but cannot receive great ones.”
The CFPB is no more than an extra in a Cecil B. DeMille extravaganza in the long and continuing drama of unilateral surrender of Congress’s powers to the executive branch to flee from accountability. Among other things, Congress has surrendered the war power, the treaty power, the power of investigation, oversight, and transparency, the confirmation power, the legislative power, inherent contempt power, and the power of the purse, including the diversion of military construction funds to build a wall along the southwest border. Self-funding by the CFPB is a lesser included constitutional offense by orders of magnitude. And what about congressional affirmation of limitless presidential power to play prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner to kill any person on the planet based on secret, unsubstantiated speculation that the victim might be a national security threat?
The staggering and alarming constitutional derelictions of Congress that have annihilated separation of powers are the elephant. The CFPB is a flea. Your readers should be informed accordingly.
Kind regards,
Bruce