@Adoucette
Allowing financial institutions that lost their own money due to recklessness and fraud should be allowed to fail, in fact true capitalist principles would demand that they do fail. The financial sector doesn't produce anything, its main street you have to worry about not the changing of money. Banks that invest in speculative trading don't deserve bailouts, they partook in risky behavior (moral hazard).
How am I ignorant of the constitution? Show me where in the constitution it claims government must fork over tax payer money to private industries that are failing?
From the conservative Cato Institute:
The federal government has no constitutional authority to spend taxpayers' money to buy distressed assets, much less to take an ownership position in private financial institutions. And Congress has no constitutional authority to delegate nearly plenary legislative power to the Treasury secretary, an executive branch official.
In the current crisis, bank runs and other forms of financial panic could lead to the collapse of the country's or even the world's economic edifice. Extraordinary measures might be in order. In extremis, it may seem quixotic to question the constitutionality of the federal bailout-but it's essential nonetheless.
Realists might say, "Save your ivory-tower doubts for the law journals." Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson famously wrote, "The Constitution is not a suicide pact." Douse the flames first; then repair the bad wiring.
But a declaration of unconstitutionality, if justified, serves three vital purposes today. It imposes a heavy burden on proponents of the bailout to explain why the Constitution can be violated with impunity. It reinforces the case for abandoning the program once any true emergency has passed. And it helps establish a presumption against adopting similar measures that might be proposed to resolve future "emergencies."
Bad Precedents
Even now some experts, including my colleagues at the Cato Institute, believe that alternative proposals (perhaps even constitutional proposals) could achieve the desired ends without socializing the financial sector and without establishing statist precedents that could haunt us for decades or longer.
Maybe the bailout is necessary. Maybe it will even work. But necessary or not, temporarily effective or not, the bailout is unconstitutional. And constitutionality is not restored merely by the invocation of "emergency" by the administration and Congress.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9729
How, as a conservative can you justify overriding the will of the people:
September 29, 2008
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The fate of the government's $700 billion financial bailout plan was thrown into doubt Monday as the House rejected the controversial measure.
http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/29/news/economy/bailout/index.htm
Then Goldman's Paulson goes in his back-room dealings threatens government with his threats of economic instability and then you get The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act.
Adoucette: if they thought the President was off the rails they would do something about it.
I disagree because they thought he was off the rails when he went into Libya without their approval and they didn't do anything about that. Also this same congressional body followed Bush into an illegal war based on lies (WMD). Based on that I would say they are terrible at telling if a president is 'off the rails'. You have an almost childish naive faith in government.
Adoucette: If you were CIC following your own policies then Al Qaeda would simply step up the recruitment of Muslims that had US citizenship and set up open operations in any country without an extradition treaty because, according to you, they would be untouchable.
First of all Al Qaeda works with different cells that rarely deal with each other, as an organization all Al Qaeda does is offer money and training. Being decentralized they do set up operations in any country they like as it is. I never said they were untouchable, not at all I said they could have asked Yemen to arrest him and hand him over and he could have faced trial. According to the government they tried to bring in Bin Laden but he resisted and got killed, now whether this is true or not no one can tell but it does show that there was an interest in bringing him to trial. Why would a trial of a low level member warrant a kill and not a trial? Its one thing to fight terrorism its another to behave like a mad man with a razor blade and strike in every direction...that's how mistakes are made. Mistakes like this:
Maher Arar, a Syrian-born dual Syrian and Canadian citizen, was detained at Kennedy International Airport on 26 September 2002, by US Immigration and Naturalization Service officials. He was heading home to Canada after a family holiday in Tunisia. After almost two weeks, enduring hours of interrogation chained, he was sent, shackled and bound, in a private jet to Jordan and then Syria, instead of being deported to Canada. There, he was interrogated and tortured by Syrian intelligence. Maher Arar was eventually released a year later. He told the BBC that he was repeatedly tortured during 10 months' detention in Syria—often whipped on the palms of his hands with metal cables. Syrian intelligence officers forced him to sign a confession linking him to Al Qaeda. He was finally released following intervention by the Canadian government. The Canadian government lodged an official complaint with the US government protesting Arar's deportation. On September 18, 2006, a Canadian public enquiry presented its findings entirely clearing Arar of any terrorist activities. In 2004 Arar filed a lawsuit in a federal court in New York against senior U.S. officials, on charges that whoever sent him to Syria knew he would be tortured by intelligence agents. US Attorney General John Ashcroft, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and FBI Director Robert Mueller are all named in the lawsuit. On October 18, 2006, Arar received the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award from the Institute for Policy Studies for his ordeal. On October 18, 2007, Maher Arar received a public apology from the U.S. House of Representatives. Nevertheless, U.S. Representative Dana Rohrabacher, who also apologized, stated that he would fight any efforts to end the practice. Arar received $10.5 million in compensation from the Canadian government for pain and suffering in his ordeal and a formal apology from Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition_by_the_United_States#Example_cases
Now what if they had killed this guy? You would have been going on about how he was a terrorist and you would have been wrong. This is why due process is necessary. You would have taken the word of the government without a stitch of evidence and you would have been wrong.