Our government officials are deluded about the limits of their power "Local police departments seem to believe they are the military,rolling into suburbia in armored vehicles while aiming assault rifles and other weapons of warfare at the civilians they are supposed to serve and protect."

If the revered Founding Fathers had clear-cut ideas about which branch of government does what, how the powers counterbalanced one another and how jurisprudence and justice are supposed to be carried out, it’s all gotten a bit jumbled in recent months. At all levels of government — federal, state and local — public officials are exhibiting behaviors and exercising powers that no dutiful acolyte of “Schoolhouse Rock!” would recognize. 

Maybe “identity crisis” isn’t quite the right turn of phrase. It’s really more a series of delusions, or perhaps misunderstandings, about who’s actually responsible for what.

Consider the evidence.

●Public prosecutors seem to believe they are defense attorneys. At least that appears to be true in the case of St. Louis County Prosecuting AttorneyRobert McCulloch. Typically, grand jury hearings are one-sided affairs in which the prosecution gets to cherry-pick only the most incriminating evidence in order to obtain an indictment, leaving out any evidence that might help a potential defendant. Hence the famous quip that any decent prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. But McCulloch and his team effectively cross-examined their own witnesses to discredit their case against Darren Wilson, by gently, leadingly questioning Wilsonand aggressively challenging any witnesses who contradicted Wilson’s account. This can only be explained by McCulloch’s apparent confusion over who his client was.

●State legislators (and their constituents) seem to believe they are the Supreme Court. At least that appears true in one insubordinate state, Arizona, where voters this month approved a ballot initiative allowing the state to ignore any federal action or program deemed “unconstitutional.” How is a law’s federal constitutionality decided? By state legislators and Arizona voters. This is a power usually reserved for the judicial branch, and ultimately the Supreme Court, but no matter. The ballot initiative’s supporters say it will come in handy when trying to dismantle theAffordable Care Act, as well as federal directives on immigration. Speaking of which . . .

●President Obama seems to believe he is a “king” or “emperor,” titles he said he’d need to unilaterally suspend deportation actions en masse, right before he unilaterally suspended deportation actions en masse.

●Local police departments seem to believe they are the military, rolling into suburbia in armored vehicles while aiming assault rifles and other weapons of warfare at the civilians they are supposed to serve and protect. At other times, the police seem to believe they are tax collectors, seizing civilians’ cash without ever filing charges and then putting the proceeds into public coffers.

●Governors seem to believe they are mathematicians, capable of reversing the rules of arithmetic. Maryland Gov.-elect Larry Hogan (R) says he will make good on his campaign promise to cut taxes, despite next year’s projected budget shortfall of nearly $600 million. Back in Arizona, Gov.-elect Doug Ducey (R) promises to eliminate the state’s personal and corporate taxes, while somehow increasing spending on education, amid an existing budget shortfall. Of course, Kansas’s recently reelected governor, Sam Brownback (R), has been using similarly magical arithmetic for a while now.

Source:http://www.washingtonpost.com