If the Van Jones incident was the Ft. Sumter moment, yesterday Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) fired the next shot across the bow in the battle to decide the constitutionality of Obama's appointment of his 32 Czars.

(via HotAir.com)

By now everyone should know that the mainstream media simply refused to abide by its obligation to cover the news and completely ignored the Van Jones story until it was over.  Jones' 9/11 trutherism notwithstanding, the more relevant reason why that was such an egregious breach of trust is that Jones would have held the pursestrings to 80 Billion dollars in taxpayer money, which he would have used to influence policy on the issue of "green jobs".

There is a difference between a simple advisor to the President and an unelected, unaccountable Czar with the power to manipulate policy matters. The first is largely innocuous. The second, however, is most definitely not.  Republicans are right to take up this issue and should focus primarily on whether each individual appointed by the President has the ability to influence public opinion using taxpayer money.

I personally don't want a single dollar of taxpayer money used for anything related to "green jobs". That's for the market and the market alone to decide.

And therein lies a fundamental difference in the worldviews of liberal/progressives like Obama and Conservatives. Obama believes that government exists to control and influence its citizens daily lives. Conservatives believe that Government exists to protect us from invasion-whether external or from within-arbitrate disputes between citizens and generally stay the hell out of the way.

It's high past time for the Senate to reassert its Constitutional responsibility to advise and consent to the appointments of "all other Officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for." Article 2, Section 2, Clause 2. 

Any of Obama's nearly three dozen czars who in any way have access to the means of influencing national policy are clearly unconstitutional. The Senate should be unequivocal in saying so.

Russ