A Quote by Alex Gibney
You see the natural progression of what happens when the executive gets power and then a new executive comes in. The new executive doesn't say, "Oh, man. The president has just got too much power. We're going to dial that back." No, they expand the power. It's like, "He didn't use it well, so I'm going to take more power and use it better because I'm a better guy and my values are better." Then you suddenly realize that the very people who were attacking Guantánamo prior to getting into office are now the people expanding an assassination program overseas.
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Assassination
Attacking
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Happens
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Related Quotes
I was very, very concerned about President Obama and how much executive order and how much executive power he tried to exert. But I think I want to be, and I think congress will be, a check on any executive, Republican or Democrat, that tries to grasp too much power. And really, a lot of the fault is not only presidents trying to take too much power, it's Congress giving up too much power.
The Obama administration has abused the executive power, enforcing Common Core on the states. It has used race to the top fans to effectively blackmail and force the states to adapt Common Core. But in one silver lining of Obama abusing executive power is that everything done with executive power can be undone with executive power and I intend to do that.
Far better to think historically, to remember the lessons of the past. Thus, far better to conceive of power as consisting in part of the knowledge of when not to use all the power you have. Far better to be one who knows that if you reserve the power not to use all your power, you will lead others far more successfully and well.
Executive power in any nation arguably has more in common with executive power in another country than with the citizens it should serve.
It's not just that there's no other spokesperson for the executive seat of power in a democratic republic anywhere in the world where you see that type of lying. It's that there's never been a spokesman for the executive seat in power who is such a prolific liar as Sarah Sanders.
President Clinton invoked executive power a bunch of times... I think once he started doing that, the courts really pushed back on him. He couldn't use it for things that actually had a better basis. He used it for things that were personal, like the Lewinsky investigation, trying to block his aides from testifying.
Church, the spiritual power, and the executive power are working today united in a system that confronts people. This alliance or cooperation between the spiritual power and the executive power, between the church and the government, unfortunately takes away the Church's basic mission. It takes away their right to speak on moral or ethical subjects.
Of one thing the executive may be sure: that the majority want more of the good things of life, and if they can get them without undue personal effort, so much the better. So the executive naturally tends to promise material gain, contingent of course on his remaining in power. The impetus to personal rule is obvious.
You don't just give the executive branch unlimited resources, unlimited power. Our founders were very concerned about too much power being invested in any one, in any branch. The balance of power is fundamental to our system.
There are things that make me excited about what I'm doing: Trouble the Water [the 2008 documentary Glover executive produced] on New Orleans, or something like Soundtrack for a Revolution, about the power of the music of the civil rights movement [which he executive produced in 2009]. Or Bamako, about the African debt crisis, a platform to discuss the experience of people who actually live it. All of these are important ways we can use film as a forum inviting people into a dialogue.
More fundamentally, however, the answer to petitioners' objection is that there can be no impairment of executive power, whether on the state or federal level, where actions pursuant to that power are impermissible under the Constitution. Where there is no power, there can be no impairment of power.
People assume that the executive branch has more power than it actually has. Only the legislative branch can create the laws; the executive branch cannot create the laws. So, if the executive branch tries to create a branch one side or the other... you go back to the founders of the nation. They set up a system that ensures that it doesn't happen.
Power to the people' can only
be put into practice when the power exercised by social elites is
dissolved into the people. Each individual can then take control of
his daily life. If 'Power to the people' means nothing more than
power to the 'leaders' of the people, then the people remain an
undifferentiated, manipulatable mass, as powerless after the revolution as they were before. In the last analysis, the people can never
have power until they disappear as a 'people.
Donald Trump, despite his campaign promises, this is not a guy who is going to be willing to send executive power that belongs to the legislative branch back to the legislative branch. I mean, Donald Trump is going to try to amass and consolidate power, given that he's an authoritarian.
When power is for sale, then government power should be severely limited. When power is abused, then the less power the better.
I take the Constitution very seriously. The biggest problems that we're facing right now have to do with [the president] trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all. And that's what I intend to reverse when I'm President of the United States of America.
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