Benghazi Laying Bare Democrats’ Abdication of Duty

Thomas Lifson recently gave compelling reasons why House Democrats run grave political risks if they boycott a select committee to investigate Benghazi.   Congressional Democrats, like the establishment leftist media, have been so fawning and flaccid in dealing with Obama that what few microns of credibility they may have had with conservatives and other normal people may soon blink out of existence.

Parallel to the political punishments waiting for these folks is a constitutional crisis that goes to the very heart of our system.  Modern governments – those that are truly “governments” and not party-driven totalitarianism like Bolshevik Russia or Nazi Germany – are systems of accountability and resistance. 

These checks on government power were also welded hard into the federal government.  The independence of the federal bench was intended to prevent government from reaching beyond the rule of law or the limits of the Constitution.  Congress, divided into two very different chambers, was a check upon itself, but also a check upon the other branches, and especially upon the president.

Our Founding Fathers could have embraced a parliamentary government.  There is nothing particularly wrong about that sort of government.  In fact, every major democracy except America and France has all real power vested in the national legislature.  In a parliamentary system, the leaders of the principal party in the best-populated branch of the legislature run the government.  When things go bad, those political leaders are replaced, or new national elections are called. .