Comment Re:Reality (Score 1) 221
Yes, but I see the law passed in 1947 as an assertion by Congress that the mission of the BGN was an article I power. Executive orders can fill in the gaps where Congress has not passed specific laws, but the legislative branch is supreme in these matters. It is the same with Judicial power. Judges can rule on the meaning of law, but Congress can then come along and blow those decisions away with new law clarifying meani ng, or just changing it. The exception is constitutional law, where it is Congress and the States together that have the power. As for names being legal before then... Well, the whole point of the executive orders in the first place was to create a sort of Doomsday Book for place names since there were a lot of conflicting place names out there. Of course, if there were local conflicts, they didn't need to listen to the federal government anyway, although they might have been forced to use the federally mandated name when mailing things via the post office (probably not though, since the post office will usually recognize alternate names for places). As for whether names were legal before then, you're kind of ignoring the fact that there are state and local governments as well. In most cases, names are actually set by statute by local governments. The BGN normally just harmonizes those names with Federal registries of names. If a town changes its name from Muckville to Muckberg, they do that by passing some form of statute in their town. Then they petition other agencies and organizations such as the BGN to recognize the name change at various levels like county, parish (which I just don't get, but whatever), boroughs, census areas, state level, federal level and whatever other administrative subdivisions may exist.
No Article 2 power authorizes the President to execute a power Congress has not yet made law for. There is in fact Supreme Court precedent confirming this.
So either all names prior to 1947 were not legal, or the Executive has this power in its own right (That doesn't mean that Congress has no oversight of it)
The point though, is that the President probably does not have that power. Being able to name things like that is a traditional right of kings, but the US President is not a king. The US President is an administrator and civil servant whose job is to follow and faithfully execute the laws.
Now that's just absurd.
Arguments that "President is not a King, therefor cannot wield powers that King's wielded" is flat-out wrong.
See: The pardon power.
The President almost certainly has the power to name anything within the Executive branch as he wishes.
There's some discussion to be had about things that Congress disagrees with- i.e., Department of War vs. Department of Defense. It will be interesting to see how the Court rules on that.
Yes, that happens a lot with people who just can't stand when people don't just fall in line and agree. Don't be that guy.
It also happens a lot when people try to dress up bad faith arguments in a veneer of logic. Don't be that guy.
I did already concede that my original statement that Gulf of Mexico _is_ the legal name in the US was not accurate. I continue to hold, however, that there is a good legal argument that Gulf of America is not the legal name, not because the BGN can not assign legal names, but because of the abuse of process and the stipulations in the original act.
Will be interesting to see how that goes.
I don't find anything the BGN did in violation of the codified public law that created it.
I also don't find that they violated their own bylaws, since- amazingly- one of their bylaws say that names that come from Congress or the President shall take precedence over any other bylaws.
In any case, this is all a bit ridiculous. No one serious considers the name change valid and it is going to be changed back after the next President is elected or possibly even after the midterms if control of Congress shifts and an update to that 1947 law happens. Probably not though, since there's a lot more important stuff to take care of.
We agree entirely on this.
There is a point to this long-winded discussion though.
The problem with Trump, are the laws that don't constrain him.
We've been playing Unitary Executive ball for a long time, and now we're freaked the fuck out that some President is wielding that power in bad faith.
This needs to be a fucking wake-up call. There can be a bad President elected every 4 years. Congress has a duty to jealously guard its power. It has failed in that duty so dramatically that we can have a more-or-less legal dictator as the President, now.
Laws need to fucking change after this. Congress needs to take its fucking job seriously.