I love the Fourth of July.  It may be my favorite holiday, and not because of fireworks, since I am neither a fireworks or bombs bursting in air sort of guy.  (On the other hand, the advent of the internet has allowed me to listen to Jean Shepherd's 4th of July story about Ludlow Kissel and his bomb every year, which I will do.)

But this post is not about that.

No, I love, the Forth of July because of what it  commemorates.

I am sadly aware of the sin with which we were born and, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/01/opinion/01schaller.html?scp=7&sq=july+...">as we were reminded again this week</a>, about which we still suffer, but despite it all, this is the day which marks the date on which the Declaration of Independence was published, a document written by very young men who convinced the people who counted in these "united states" to try, by risking their "lives, their fortune and their scared honor" to assert that government requires the assent of the governed.

It is such a <a href="http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm">great document </a>. It is truly laughable that the political right claims superior ownership of the thing, since it stands for almost precisely the opposite of what these latter day Tories would impose on us.

The New York Times gives up one of its full page back of the section display ads to republish it on the Fourth.  A paragraph back is a link to its text.  It is so worth reading, as if it were a diary and, it deserves rec's from everyone on this site particularly.

Last year, I posted elsewhere what appears under a few dashes, which some may think celebrates more the Constitution---some fifteen years in the future when the Declaration was published  ---- but I don't think so.  I think, instead, that what the Declaration of Independence stood for is under assault today despite the protections included when the Constitution was finally promulgated.

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Today is a day to read not only the Declaration of Independence but <a href="http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=343&invol=579">Youngstown Co v. Sawyer</a>, 343 U.S. 579 (1952), since it is among the most important cases the Supreme Court has decided, and particularly because it delineated the powers of the President and those of the Congress. Reading it again is again a civics lesson appropriate to this holiday in this time of abject lawlessness, and the attempt of the Executive to assume the powers that the Crown itself lost many centuries ago.

Justice Black, speaking for the Court, explained the arrangement clearly and concisely, in a way that the current President, and a vast majority of the press seems not to understand, as elemental and fundamental as it is:

<blockquote>"In the framework of our Constitution, the President's power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a lawmaker. The Constitution limits his functions in the lawmaking process to the recommending of laws he thinks wise and the vetoing of laws he thinks bad. And the Constitution is neither silent nor equivocal about who shall make laws which the President is to execute. The first section of the first article says that 'All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States . . . .' After granting many powers to the Congress, Article I goes on to provide that Congress may 'make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.'"</blockquote>

So Happy Fourth, in the year leading to the renewal of that which has made this nation the last best hope for mankind, as the founders intended.