One of the strangest things I have heard in the current debate about the debt ceiling and the hell on earth that would be unleashed if it were not raised post haste...with increases in taxes as well...is the notion that the President has some authority to raise the debt limit on his own. I have heard members of Congress urge the president to do just that, and the other day I heard the Chosen One intimating to the La Raza meeting that he had considered it, but that he wasn't going to do that because it isn't the way a democracy works. But he did it with the attitude that he simply is choosing not to use this particular power, and the constitutional illiterates at La Raza ate it up, as have many on the Democratic side of the political aisle, and way too many of the "intellectuals" in the media. Their attitude about it basically is that the president is showing in this moment how great a leader he is by allowing Congress to keep up their negotiations without him acting like The Rock and simply laying the smackdown on their candy @$$e$.

Then there was Mitch McConnell's brilliant plan to try to shift political blame to the White House for this mess by proposing legislation that would allow the President to raise the debt limit on his own, without authorization from Congress. I don't know, and frankly don't care, if this was meant to be a one time offer from McConnell to the White House; all I know is that the very idea is dangerous. It is all well and good for McConnell to offer to gut the House of it's constitutional prerogative from over in the rare air of the Senate, but just because you offer to write a statute doesn't make what you're trying to do any closer to right than it was when you hatched the idea.

But what is amazing to me is the fact that both those claiming to believe that a president has the authority to unilaterally raise the debt limit on his own and those who supported McConnell's crackpot idea seem to believe that the Constitution actually allows these sorts of things. And when elected members of Congress believe this stuff, you can see why we are in the mess we're in right now. I mean, how can you swear an oath to support and defend a document that you have no clue to what it says?

But what is even scarier than that is what I believe to be true in this instance, mainly that these people know what the Constitution says and simply don't care, because they feel they are serving an electorate that had no firsthand knowledge of what our governing document actually says.

Take the McConnell proposal, please! I fail to understand how someone like Mitch McConnell and anyone who thought his idea was workable could look at the Constitution, the history behind it, and the men who framed it and actually believe that such a plan would be allowable under that document. What made those idiots think for even a moment that a simple statute could transfer the enumerated powers granted to the Congress in Article 1 Section 8 to borrow money on the credit of the United States to the Executive? What part of "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debt...of the United States..." did these people not understand? That doesn't even need any interpretation to understand! Yet Mitch McConnell, in a pitiful bid to try to gain political points on Obama was willing to strip the House of it's responsibilities...and hardly anyone questioned the constitutionality of it.

Then you move onto the Usurper in Chief and his minions pretending that somehow the Fourteenth Amendment gives the President the authority to incur more debt for the nation on his own volition. They keep yammering about Section 4 as if it gives the President some super-authority, but this is what the section says verbatim: "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void." Can anyone out there tell me where the idea that the President, who isn't even mentioned in this section, has the right to incur debt without congressional approval can be found here? And if this were giving the Executive some special powers not mention anywhere in Article 2, which basically lays out what the Executive is allowed to do, why does Section 5 say this:" The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article." I'll tell you why: the Democrats are itching to make Obama into some type of monarch, that's why! But even the various kings and queens of England were not allowed to drag their nations into debt without the say-so of Parliament...and these were people who believed that God Almighty Himself had ordained them to rule over their subjects! But even the divinely appointed kings and queens of England had enough humility to understand that they had some earthly limitations on their power, but this clown and his enablers think he should rule without oversight of any kind when it comes to spending our money and borrowing in our names!

Look, I don't know how this will all turn out in the end, but I do know that this type of intentional ignorance of our governing document is not good for this country. We cannot allow our elected leaders and representatives to misconstrue, distort, or simply ignore the Constitution to fit their political whims. It was those types of shenanigans that got us into this mess to begin with, and allowing it to go on only makes the matters worse.