Is this Democratic Underground?

[Anatos]

287. You should begin by learning

The Constitution does no such thing?

"The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States", Article II, Section 2. Perhaps you have some lack of familiarity with the meaning of the term "Commander-In-Chief", (as a former service member I know it well) but I think the context makes that clear. Armies are those people paid by a government to kill other people. The President is in charge of that kind of thing, when or if it becomes necessary.

On the matter of the Founders, the branches were not given equal powers. It can be inferred that the intent was to give them each sufficient power to check the others, and so the balance would indicate they must be 'equal' in some way. Nevertheless it doesn't SAY anywhere in the Constitution that they have 'equal powers'. There is also a well-supported consideration that making the Congress "Article 1" provides the legislature a certain preeminence, power-wise, in keeping with the Founder's theories of government. More importantly, even if they have 'equal' powers, that does not indicate they have 'equivalent' powers. Quite the opposite: they each have different powers. One of the powers of the President is CIC. One of the responsibilities of the CIC is order the military to kill certain people, and not others.

"He sure does not have the power to order the death penalty without charges or trial. "
Well, no, he doesn't. Because it isn't "the death penalty" if there are no charges or trials. Nor is it either an "assassination" in most cases, or a "murder". It is a military action. You can't honestly be so dim as to believe that the guy in charge of the Army isn't allowed to order military actions?

Self-government is wildly dangerous, yes. Both the threat of chaos and the threat of tyranny are constant. But bear in mind: you cannot insulate yourself from these dangers with crafty documents and laws. You cannot rest on your haunches, confident that because the law says so, no government official can abuse their power. Nor can you simply refuse to give them any power.

Bush never claimed he had the power of a king: that was something you said about him. (I'm not agreeing with him, a CIC is powerful but not a king. I'm just trying to keep the facts straight, since you obviously aren't interested in doing it yourself.) He claimed to be "the decider"! And you know what? He was. You can wish it weren't true, but you can't say it wasn't.

"There was a time when people on this board understood the rule of law in this country"
That's what I've been saying. You are mistaken. There was a time (still is) when people on this board (most of them, but I'm here now so not all of them) had a childish, naive, idealistic idea of what "rule of law" means. It's like instead of learning the basics in school and then growing wiser as you gained even more knowledge after that, you just got indoctrinated to believe one thing uncritically and without examination, and now you just cough up myths and then vehemently insult anyone who tries to correct you.

All of these "but he could be a tyrant" things you come up with, they're quite valid concerns. And they were directly confronted by the Founders, who decided that, despite that danger, the government cannot function without a single individual who is both Chief Executive and Commander-In-Chief.

"They were well aware of the dangers of allowing one man or woman have that much power and they took great pains to try to prevent it from ever happening. "

Funny, you'd think they could do that pretty easily by not creating the office with that much power in the first place. The great pains they took to try to prevent it from ever happening were elections every four years. Because THEY were smart enough to know that writing a law against tyranny is a waste of time, even if you aren't.