Is the US Constitution irrelevant?

Thomas Sowell raises an issue here that should truly concern every American.  Executive orders have been used by presidents many times over the years and for many different reasons, some appropriate and some not.  The danger of the use of these orders lies in the ability of the executive branch to circumvent the will of the people as expressed by the Congress.  It is the Congress alone that has the authority to make laws and while the executive branch has to interpret the law in order to carry out its responsibility to execute it, the executive has no write to overturn aspects of a given law it may disagree with.  And yet this is what is happening with great frequency in the Obama administration no doubt because progressives don't really believe in the Constitution.  As Sowell points out, freedom is lost in increments, not all at once.  Do we really want an imperial executive as the head of our government to the extent he is the final arbiter of what the law says and how it is to be executed?  The point here is do we want to return to the 17th century idea of a benevolent tsar, like Peter the Great, for example.  Peter the Great did many impressive things for his country including creating the city of St. Petersburg and bringing Russia into conformity with all the advances of European countries of that time.  He also beheaded those who displeased him for any reason, took the country into war for any reason he wanted and favored some over others because he liked them more.  He was the justice and legislative systems rolled into one autocrat.  Okay if you were one of the favored few maybe, not so good if you weren't.  Most Americans would not like to return to those days.

Gerrymandering --the bane of democracy

There is little doubt that the single biggest problem contributing to the dysfunctional US Congress is the practice of gerrymandering.  This particular anti democratic political shenanigan is practiced by members of both US political parties and is designed to accomplish exactly what it in fact does which is to assure incumbent members of Congress their respective seats.  The practice is the primary reason we have representatives like Maxine Waters and Sheila Lee, two of the more racists members of the Congressional Black Caucus CBC), itself a racist group within Congress committed to furthering the interests of blacks before the interests of the country.  Sheila Lee, BTW, is a graduate of Yale College.  Nice. Makes a grad proud. A recent analysis pointed out that in any normal House vote, typically 80% of the races are considered safe for the incumbent.  Such is the effect of gerrymandering.  Gerrymandering does more to divide the country along racial lines that any of the other unconstitutional and divisive programs like Affirmative Action and the now infamous Community Redevelopment Act.  The latter program in its various permutations over the years was largely responsible for the sub prime mortgage fiasco which led to the near collapse of the entire financial system in the US. There have been several books on this subject, notably ones by Thomas Sowell and Peter Schweitzer that clearly catalogue and explain how this political event, led by the Black Caucus and other liberal politicians, (Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Barak Obama, Cuomo and others) mostly in the Carter and Clinton administrations, brought all this about.  If enough people read these books and others and came to understand how it al happened we might just be able to make a few course corrections, eliminate all the racist, divisive government programs including gerrymandering, and return to a functioning democracy true to the principles of the founding fathers and the constitution.  Not in my lifetime.  Here is a proposal to reform the current gerrymandering system.