Let’s see: Black nationalist, communist, 9-11 Truther, environmentalist fanatic, Obama policy czar; a natural progression in radicalism

Back during the dark days of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld administration, righteous liberals were very concerned about the separation of powers problems posed by unilateral executive action against terrorists and suspected terrorists. Such concerned constitutionalists went to court again and again to contest such executive usurpation over military commissions, detention of unlawful enemy combatants, and warrantless wiretapping for intelligence gathering to detect incipient terrorist plots. Such national security concerns were quite beyond the President’s power, judicial precedents to the contrary notwithstanding. The courts did uphold a few of these critics’ constitutional claims, having to discard common sense and to overrule decades-old precedents in the process and injecting themselves into an area (national security and military needs) in which the courts institutionally and the judges personally are woefully incompetent to decide.

Such liberal ultra-strict sticklers for collaborative action between the President and Congress also killed many trees publishing articles editorials, law review pieces, and other pronouncements that purported to demonstrate the nefariousness of the executive’s unilateral actions in any field, but especially in the national security matters at hand. Of course, they were no more pleased when Congress approved the President’s handiwork in some of these areas. In a couple of cases, the Supreme Court, apparently insulted that the Congress and President had done what the learned jurists had prescribed in the earlier adjudications, now found the combined collaborative effort unconstitutional, as well.

This battle on the executive power front has fallen eerily quiet since the election of Barack Obama. Indeed, Mr. Obama has made unprecedented use of unilateral executive power through the appointment of policy-making “czars” that bypass the constitutionally-prescribed Senatorial confirmation process for officers of the United States. Rather, these independent commissars report directly to the White House as Presidential functionaries though their range of discretion may supplant or even replace authority normally given to officers (such as Cabinet secretaries) subject to the traditional constitutional processes.

One would think that, based on traditional understanding and Supreme Court precedent (Youngstown Sheet & Tube, Dames & Moore, Curtiss-Wright Export), the President’s power to act unilaterally under his own constitutional authority would be greater in foreign affairs, military command, and national security matters than in the ordinary domestic policy tussles for which these “czars” are responsible. But the liberals act exactly opposite. To the extent that there is any grumbling, it remains over the executive branch’s treatment of foreign terrorists (detention, interrogation) and Americans or foreigners suspected of collaborating with such foreign terrorists. But there is no similar concern about ordinary Americans’ lives being affected by the actions of such an imperial presidency. I suppose it is hard for those critics to get worked up over uncontrolled executive action against an unwieldy mass of common Americans trying to live their lives when there is so much more romance in feeling compassion for the exotic foreign terror dealers. The frisson of danger in talking to someone sworn to kill you and as many of your kind must meet some greater psychological need than worrying about your boring gun and Bible-clinging compatriots.

One of these “czars” is a typical example of the person liberals would consider it ridiculous and rather laughable to worry about. He is Van Jones, the President’s “green jobs” czar. According to sources cited by Gateway Pundit, Jones is a founder of the radical group Color of Change and a self-avowed “rowdy black nationalist.” According to cited sources in Wikipedia, Jones described himself as a communist in 1992.

Now it appears that Mr. Green Jobs is a 9-11 Truther. I have previously posted about the devoid-of-fact conspiracy mongering of the Obama birth certificate sleuths. Their antics and theorizing was a staple of cable news shows (well, CNN) and cable talk shows (well, CNN and MSNBC) for weeks. The White House took the opportunity to bemoan their kookiness.

But this group of Truthers, led by structural engineer Rosie O’Donnell and materials physicist Jeannine Garofalo, rejects the notion that plain old jets hijacked by Islamic terrorists brought down the World Trade Center. They claim that steel cannot be brought down by jet fuel explosions, and that the planes had their passengers removed (who remain hidden by the government) and were filled with explosives. The alternative theory is that the real jets were shot down by North Dakota Air National fighter planes, and other explosives-laden planes were crashed into the buildings. Most significant, the government planned or (under the version that this was the Mossad’s doing) at least knew about it. They’re a bit hazy about whether the mastermind was Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, or the usual neocon cabal, i.e., the worldwide Zionist conspiracy. (I’d pick Cheney for sheer audacity and scope of the project.)

There has not as of yet been the same media feeding-frenzy about the lunacy of these Truthers, some of whom also populate the Birther ranks. Keith Olbermann has not yet leveled his keen analytic and dispassionate reason at them for the elegant fisking they deserve. Actually, there are crickets chirping all around, with the media hoping that this guy is gone within the next couple of days so they won’t be forced to defend him and Obama. Mark Steyn recalls Bill Clinton’s succinct assessment of the Truthers, “You’re nuts.”

Oh, and he’s also a supporter of convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal.

And then there’s his part in the God’less America “peace rally.”

Allahpundit thinks that this is a practical joke by Obama on the media: “Hey Rahm — bet you 20 bucks I can get a Truther communist appointed to an environmental oversight position.” I disagree. That would require too much introspection and self-analysis by Obama and his minions to see who and what they are. And Obama doesn’t do humor. Messiahs are not known for funny gags.

Can one even contemplate what the Congressional, Democratic, and media response would have been if Bush had appointed someone of Jones’s temperament, background, and degree of ideological radicalism (on the other side, of course)? Rowdy White supremacist, Aryan Nation follower? BTW, I am not convinced that this guy really believes all this stuff. I think that it is not beyond contemplation that these speeches, groups, petitions, etc., are just ways for him to talk the talk and pretend to walk the walk of the left-wing academic and social groups with which he associated. I think he was just trying to find a way to money and influence, and this seemed to him the most plausible in light of his academic background and his race (plus, I agree, some core leftist beliefs).

Leaving aside his general past looniness, he believes his current job description to be to transform society by getting rid of capitalism. That would indeed be an expensive proposition, if this Spanish study is correct. At a cost of more than $100,000 per year per job, and a destruction of 2.2 other jobs per green job created, the greening of the world would seem to be due more to the reduction of the standard of living of the large numbers of people who would be out of work.

UPDATE: The czar has been deposed, er, abdicated. It was not unexpected that this would occur in the middle of the night during the end-of-summer Labor Day weekend in this “most transparent of all administrations.”