Charles Krauthammer Quotes

Only Congress can amend the law, not President Obama nor the courts.

Federal bureaucracies are creatures of Congress, not the executive.

Legislative power is always superior to the executive.

The Founders of this Nation entrusted the lawmaking power to the Congress alone in both good and bad times … the President's power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a law-maker.

In the government of this Commonwealth, the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers, or either of them: The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them: The judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them: to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.

It may be said, indeed, that the Constitution has given to the Executive the power to annul the acts of the legislative body by refusing to them his assent.

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.

I decline submitting my officials rights and powers to the determination of a coordinate department, usurping a jurisdiction unprecedented in the history of our country, and fraught with the greatest danger to our institutions. I shall deem it my imperative duty to repel, with all of the force vested in this department, any infringement upon my rights and powers.

The most important benefit that I can confer on the country by my Presidency is to insist upon the entire independence of the executive and legislative branches of government

As the Executive cannot decide the question of war on the affirmative side, neither ought it do so on the negative side by preventing the competent body [Congress] from deliberating on the question.

The legislature makes, the executive executes, and the judiciary construes the law.

Your memo is trumping a Congressional statute. You don't have the discretion on whether to follow the law or not.

The Supreme Court, of course, has the responsibility of ensuring that our government never oversteps its proper bounds or violates the rights of individuals. But the Court must also recognize the limits on itself and respect the choices made by the American people.

We didn't pass any constitutional amendments that affected the executive branch while I was governor.

Loyalty of the law-making power to the executive power was one of the dangers the political fathers foretold.

The legislature's job is to write law. It's the executive branch's job to interpret law.

The old Court you and I served so long will not be worthy of its traditions if Nixon can twist, turn and fashion If Nixon gets away with that, then Nixon makes the law as he goes along - not the Congress nor the courts.

The courts are truly the least dangerous of the three branches of our government.

The difference between the departments undoubtedly is, that the legislature makes, the executive executes, and the judiciary construes the law.

Separation of powers means that the president cannot control Congress.

The Bush administration is not arguing that the President is above the law; they are arguing that the President is the law.

I am not responsible to the Senate and will not submit my actions to them.

I do not believe that we [Congress] should allow him [the President] to nullify acts of Congress by executive fiat. There is not one syllable in the Constitution which authorizes the President to exercise such power.

[Congress is] the chief aggrandizer of the Executive.

The President ... should be merely the executor of a power of decision that rests elsewhere; that is, in the Congress.