Ethics

Those Scary Obama "Czars"

By Ed Brayton

One of the stranger memes being pushed by right wing pundits these days is the notion that Obama has appointed this vast army of "czars" that are unaccountable to Congress and hold some incredible amount of secretive power. Glenn Beck has been ranting and raving about this for the past few weeks, trying his best to scare the hell out of his followers.

Let's make one thing clear right up front: There are no czars. None. For some weird reason going back all the way to FDR, we have chosen -- entirely randomly -- to call some executive branch officials czars while not calling others in exactly the same positions by that title. But no one holds that actual title. It's an entirely arbitrary label assigned by the media, by political pundits and, now too often, by presidents who want to seem really serious about some particular issue.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on September 01, 2009 (boomark / email).