Eekonomics

Domestic Drones Negative- Earliest Bird ***Topicality*** 1NC- Substantial Substantially is anything between 80% and 90% Tax Law Manual 09, section 201.022, July 21, 2009, http://www.twc.state.tx.us/ui/tax/manuals/law/law_ch3_03.html There have been no court cases in Texas or other states construing the words "substantially all" as used in this subsection of the Texas law or in a similar section of other state laws. The words have been used in other statutes, however, and have been defined by court decisions; these decisions, taken together, indicate that "substantially all" may be any percentage between 80 and 90. It seems that 90% or more of the assets may be safely construed as "substantially all." A percentage of assets ranging between 80% and 90% may logically be questioned as not being "substantially all." It can be presumed by field personnel that liability will be established under this subsection if there is an unquestionable finding that as much as 90% of the assets of the predecessor were acquired and that the other conditions of this subsection have been met. If the facts clearly show the acquisition of assets by a percentage figure between 80 and 90, it can be presumed that liability as an employer under this subsection will not be established by the Commission without additional facts supporting a showing that the organization, trade or business has also been acquired. In any situation investigated, the conclusion reached should not be totally based on the percentage of assets acquired if there is a possibility that further facts about the organization, trade or business will make a stronger case for liability. Armed drones perform a minority of surveillance operations by the United States- Bergenas ’13 (Johan Bergenas, “Unarmed Drones Can Strengthen US And African Security”, http://www.ibtimes.com/unarmed-drones-can-strengthen-us-african-security-1348089, July 16, 2013) President Barack Obama’s use of armed drones to kill terrorists has dominated the debate about unmanned aerial vehicles, while comparatively little attention has been given to non-weaponized drones. Yet these unarmed drones may be even more important to managing terrorist threats. The United States should effectively use its fleet of unarmed surveillance drones to comprehensively combat activities that sustain terrorist organizations-- namely, transnational criminal enterprises that illegally trade in everything from arms and drugs to counterfeit clothing and ivory, and even take part in kidnappings. Voting issue for ground and limits- enables squirrely affirmatives- vote negative for fairness and education ***CP*** Executive CP 1NC- XO CP The President of the United States should request his Counsel and the Office of Legal Counsel for coordination over ending the use of surveillance operations performed by armed drones in the United States. The President should end the use of surveillance operations performed by armed drones in the United States Constraints through executive coordination solves signaling Posner & Vermeule ‘6 --- *Prof of Law at U Chicago, AND ** Prof of Law at Harvard (9/19/2006, Eric A. Posner & Adrian Vermeule, “The Credible Executive,” http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=931501)) IV. Executive Signaling: Law and Mechanisms We suggest that the executive’s credibility problem can be solved by second-order mechanisms of executive signaling. In the general case, well-motivated executives send credible signals by taking actions that are more costly for ill-motivated actors than for well-motivated ones, thus distinguishing themselves from their ill-motivated mimics. Among the specific mechanisms we discuss, an important subset involve executive self-binding, whereby executives commit themselves to a course of action that would impose higher costs on ill-motivated actors. Commitments themselves have value as signals of benign motivations. This departs from the usual approach in legal scholarship. Legal theory has often discussed self-binding by “government” or government officials. In constitutional theory, it is often suggested that constitutions represent an attempt by “the people” to bind “themselves” against their own future decisionmaking pathologies, or relatedly that constitutional prohibitions represent mechanisms by which governments commit themselves not to expropriate investments or to exploit their populations.71 Whether or not this picture is coherent,72 it is not the question we examine here, although some of the relevant considerations are similar.73 We are not concerned with binding the president so that he cannot abuse his powers, but with how he might bind himself or take other actions that enhance his credibility, so that he can generate support from the public and other members of the government. Furthermore, our question is subconstitutional; it is whether a well-motivated executive, acting within an established set of constitutional and statutory rules, can use signaling to generate public trust. Accordingly we proceed by assuming that no constitutional amendments or new statutes will be enacted. Within these constraints, what can a well-motivated executive do to bootstrap himself to credibility? The problem for the well-motivated executive is to credibly signal his benign motivations; in general, the solution is to engage in actions that are less costly for good types than for bad types. We begin with some relevant law; then examine a set of possible mechanisms, emphasizing both the conditions under which they might succeed and the conditions under which they might not; and then examine the costs of credibility. A. A Preliminary Note on Law and Self-Binding Many of our mechanisms are unproblematic from a legal perspective, as they involve presidential actions that are clearly lawful. But a few raise legal questions; in particular, those that involve self-binding.74 Can a president bind himself to respect particular first-order policies? With qualifications, the answer is “yes, at least to the same extent that a legislature can.” Formally, a duly promulgated executive rule or order binds even the executive unless and until it is validly abrogated, thereby establishing a new legal status quo.75 The legal authority to establish a new status quo allows a president to create inertia or political constraints that will affect his own future choices. In a practical sense, presidents, like legislatures, have great de facto power to adopt policies that shape the legal landscape for the future. A president might commit himself to a long-term project of defense procurement or infrastructure or foreign policy, narrowing his own future choices and generating new political coalitions that will act to defend the new rules or policies. More schematically, we may speak of formal and informal means of self-binding: (1) The president might use formal means to bind himself. This is possible in the sense that an executive order, if otherwise valid, legally binds the president while it is in effect and may be enforced by the courts. It is not possible in the sense that the president can always repeal the executive order if he can bear the political and reputational costs of doing so. (2) The president might use informal means to bind himself. This is not only possible but frequent and important. Issuing an executive rule providing for the appointment of special prosecutors, as Nixon did, is not a formal self-binding.76 However, there may be large political costs to repealing the order. This effect does not depend on the courts’ willingness to enforce the order, even against Nixon himself. Court enforcement makes the order legally binding while it is in place, but only political and reputational enforcement can protect it from repeal. Just as a dessert addict might announce to his friends that he is going on a no-dessert diet in order to raise the reputational costs of backsliding and thus commit himself, so too the repeal of an executive order may be seen as a breach of faith even if no other institution ever enforces it. In what follows, we will invoke both formal and informal mechanisms. For our purposes, the distinction between the authority to engage in de jure self-binding (legally limited and well-defined) and the power to engage in de facto self-binding (broad and amorphous) is secondary. So long as policies are deliberately chosen with a view to generating credibility, and do so by constraining the president’s own future choices in ways that impose greater costs on ill-motivated presidents than on well-motivated ones, it does not matter whether the constraint is formal or informal. B. Mechanisms What signaling mechanisms might a well-motivated executive adopt to credibly assure voters, legislators and judges that his policies rest on judgments about the public interest, rather than on power-maximization, partisanship or other nefarious motives? Intrabranch separation of powers. In an interesting treatment of related problems, Neal Katyal suggests that the failure of the Madisonian system counsels “internal separation of powers” within the executive branch.77 Abdication by Congress means that there are few effective checks on executive power; second-best substitutes are necessary. Katyal proposes some mechanisms that would be adopted by Congress, such as oversight hearings by the minority party, but his most creative proposals are for arrangements internal to the executive branch, such as redundancy and competition among agencies, stronger civil-service protections and internal adjudication of executive controversies by insulated “executive” decisionmakers who resemble judges in many ways.78Katyal’s argument is relevant because the mechanisms he discusses might be understood as signaling devices, but his overall approach is conceptually flawed, on two grounds. First, the assumption that second-best constraints on the executive should reproduce the Madisonian separation of powers within the executive branch is never defended. The idea seems to be that this is as close as we can get to the first-best, while holding constant everything else in our constitutional order. But the general theory of second-best states that approaching as closely as possible to the first-best will not necessarily be the preferred strategy;79 the best approach may be to adjust matters on other margins as well, in potentially unpredictable ways. If the Madisonian system has failed in the ways Katyal suggests, the best compensating adjustment might be, for all we know, to switch to a parliamentary system. (We assume that no large-scale changes of this sort are possible, whereas Katyal seemingly assumes that they are, or at least does not make clear his assumptions in this regard). Overall, Katyal’s view has a kind of fractal quality – each branch should reproduce within itself the very same separation of powers structure that also describes the whole system – but it is not explained why the constitutional order should be fractal. Second, Katyal’s proposals for internal separation of powers are self-defeating: the motivations that Katyal ascribes to the executive are inconsistent with the executive adopting or respecting the prescriptions Katyal recommends.80 Katyal never quite says so explicitly, but he clearly envisions the executive as a power-maximizing actor, in the sense that the president seeks to remove all constraints on his current choices.81 Such an executive would not adopt or enforce the internal separation of powers to check himself. Executive signaling is not, even in principle, a solution to the lack of constraints on a power-maximizing executive in the sense Katyal implicitly intends. Although an illmotivated executive might bind himself to enhance his strategic credibility, as explained above, he would not do so in order to restore the balance of powers. Nor is it possible, given Katyal’s premise of legislative passivity or abdication, that Congress would force the internal separation of powers on the executive. In what follows, we limit ourselves to proposals that are consistent with the motivations, beliefs, and political opportunities that we ascribe to the well-motivated executive, to whom the proposals are addressed. This limitation ensures that the proposals are not self-defeating, whatever their costs. The contrast here must not be drawn too simply. A well-motivated executive, in our sense, might well attempt to increase his power. The very point of demonstrating credibility is to encourage voters and legislators to increase the discretionary authority of the executive, where all will be made better off by doing so. Scholars such as Katyal who implicitly distrust the executive, however, do not subscribe to this picture of executive motivations. Rather, they see the executive as an unfaithful agent of the voters; the executive attempts to maximize his power even where fully-informed voters would prefer otherwise. An actor of that sort will have no incentive to adopt proposals intended to constrain that sort of actor. Independent commissions. We now turn to some conceptually coherent mechanisms of executive signaling. Somewhat analogously to Katyal’s idea of the internal separation of powers, a well-motivated executive might establish independent commissions to review policy decisions, either before or after the fact. Presidents do this routinely, especially after a policy has had disastrous outcomes, but sometimes beforehand as well. Independent commissions are typically blue-ribbon and bipartisan.82 We add to this familiar process the idea that the President might gain credibility by publicly committing or binding himself to give the commission authority on some dimension. The president might publicly promise to follow the recommendations of such a commission, or to allow the commission to exercise de facto veto power over a policy decision before it is made, or might promise before the policy is chosen that the commission will be given power to review its success after the fact. To be sure, there will always be some wiggle room in the terms of the promise, but that is true of almost all commitments, which raise the costs of wiggling out even if they do not completely prevent it. Consider whether George W. Bush’s credibility would have been enhanced had he appointed a blue-ribbon commission to examine the evidence for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the 2003 invasion, and publicly promised not to invade unless the commission found substantial evidence of their existence. Bush would have retained his preexisting legal authority to order the invasion even if the commission found the evidence inadequate, but the political costs of doing so would have been large. Knowing this, and knowing that Bush shared that knowledge, the public could have inferred that Bush’s professed motive – elimination of weapons of mass destruction – was also his real motive. Public promises that inflict reputational costs on badly motivated behavior help the well-motivated executive to credibly distinguish himself from the ill-motivated one. The more common version of this tactic is to appoint commissions after the relevant event, as George W. Bush did to investigate the faulty reports by intelligence agencies that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.83 If the president appoints after-the-fact commissions, the commissions can enhance his credibility for the next event—by showing that he will be willing, after that event, to subject his statements to scrutiny by public experts. Here, however, the demonstration of credibility is weaker, because there is no commitment to appoint any after-the-fact commissions in the future – merely a plausible inference that the president’s future behavior will track his past behavior. Bipartisan appointments. In examples of the sort just mentioned, the signaling arises from public position-taking. The well-motivated executive might produce similar effects through appointments to office.84 A number of statutes require partisan balance on multimember commissions; although these statutes are outside the scope of our discussion, we note that presidents might approve them because they allow the president to commit to a policy that legislators favor, thus encouraging legislators to increase the scope of the delegation in the first place.85 For similar reasons, presidents may consent to restrictions on the removal of agency officials, because the restriction enables the president to commit to giving the agency some autonomy from the president’s preferences.86 Similar mechanisms can work even where no statutes are in the picture. As previously mentioned, during World War II, FDR appointed Republicans to important cabinet positions, making Stimson his Secretary of War. Clinton appointed William Cohen, a moderate Republican, as Secretary of Defense in order to shore up his credibility on security issues. Bipartisanship of this sort might improve the deliberation that precedes decisions, by impeding various forms of herding, cascades and groupthink;87 however, we focus on its credibility-generating effects. By (1) expanding the circle of those who share the president’s privileged access to information, (2) ensuring that policy is partly controlled by officials with preferences that differ from the president’s, and (3) inviting a potential whistleblower into the tent, bipartisanship helps to dispel the suspicion that policy decisions rest on partisan motives or extreme preferences, which in turn encourages broader delegations of discretion from the public and Congress. A commitment to bipartisanship is only one way in which appointments can generate credibility. Presidents might simply appoint a person with a reputation for integrity, as when President Nixon appointed Archibald Cox as special prosecutor (although plausibly Nixon did so because he was forced to do so by political constraints, rather than as a tactic for generating credibility). A person with well-known preferences on a particular issue, even if not of the other party or widely respected for impartiality, can serve as a credible whistleblower on that issue. Thus presidents routinely award cabinet posts to leaders of subsets of the president’s own party, leaders whose preferences are known to diverge from the president’s on the subject; one point of this is to credibly assure the relevant interest groups that the president will not deviate (too far) from their preferences. The Independent Counsel Statute institutionalized the special prosecutor and strengthened it. But the statute proved unpopular and was allowed to lapse in 1999.88 This experience raises two interesting questions. First, why have presidents confined themselves to appointing lawyers to investigate allegations of wrongdoing; why have they not appointed, say, independent policy experts to investigate allegations of policy failure? Second, why did the Independent Counsel Statute fail? Briefly, the statute failed because it was too difficult to control the behavior of the prosecutor, who was not given any incentive to keep his investigation within reasonable bounds.89 Not surprisingly, policy investigators would be even less constrained since they would not be confined by the law, and at the same time, without legal powers they would probably be ignored on partisan grounds. A commission composed of members with diverse viewpoints is harder to ignore, if the members agree with each other. More generally, the decision by presidents to bring into their administrations members of other parties, or persons with a reputation for bipartisanship and integrity, illustrates the formation of domestic coalitions of the willing. Presidents can informally bargain around the formal separation of powers90 by employing subsets of Congress, or of the opposing party, to generate credibility while maintaining a measure of institutional control. FDR was willing to appoint Knox and Stimson, but not to give the Republicans in Congress a veto. Truman was willing to ally with Arthur Vandenbergh but not with all the Republicans; Clinton was willing to appoint William Cohen but not Newt Gingrich. George W. Bush likewise made a gesture towards credibility by briefing members of the Senate Intelligence Committee – including Democrats – on the administration’s secret surveillance program(s), which provided a useful talking point when the existence of the program(s) was revealed to the public. Counter-partisanship. Related to bipartisanship is what might be called counterpartisanship: presidents have greater credibility when they choose policies that cut against the grain of their party’s platform or their own presumed preferences.91 Only Nixon could go to China, and only Clinton could engineer welfare reform. Voters and publics rationally employ a political heuristic: the relevant policy, which voters are incapable of directly assessing, must be highly beneficial if it is chosen by a president who is predisposed against it by convictions or partisan loyalty.92 Accordingly, those who wish to move U.S. terrorism policy towards greater security and less liberty might do well to support the election of a Democrat.93 By the same logic, George W. Bush is widely suspected of nefarious motives when he rounds up alleged enemy combatants, but not when he creates a massive prescription drug benefit. Counter-partisanship can powerfully enhance the president’s credibility, but it depends heavily on a lucky alignment of political stars. A peace-loving president has credibility when he declares a military emergency but not when he appeases; a belligerent president has credibility when he offers peace but not when he advocates military solutions. A lucky nation has a well-motivated president with a belligerent reputation when international tensions diminish (Ronald Reagan) and a president with a pacific reputation when they grow (Abraham Lincoln, who opposed the Mexican War). But a nation is not always lucky. Transparency. The well-motivated executive might commit to transparency, as a way to reduce the costs to outsiders of monitoring his actions.94 The FDR strategy of inviting potential whistleblowers from the opposite party into government is a special case of this; the implicit threat is that the whistleblower will make public any evidence of partisan motivations. The more ambitious case involves actually exposing the executive’s decisionmaking processes to observation. To the extent that an ill-motivated executive cannot publicly acknowledge his motivations or publicly instruct subordinates to take them into account in decisionmaking, transparency will exclude those motivations from the decisionmaking process. The public will know that only a well-motivated executive would promise transparency in the first place, and the public can therefore draw an inference to credibility. Credibility is especially enhanced when transparency is effected through journalists with reputations for integrity or with political preferences opposite to those of the president. Thus George W. Bush gave Bob Woodward unprecedented access to White House decisionmaking, and perhaps even to classified intelligence,95 with the expectation that the material would be published. This sort of disclosure to journalists is not real-time transparency – no one expects meetings of the National Security Council to appear on CSPAN – but the anticipation of future disclosure can have a disciplining effect in the present. By inviting this disciplining effect, the administration engages in signaling in the present through (the threat of) future transparency. There are complex tradeoffs here, because transparency can have a range of harmful effects. As far as process is concerned, decisionmakers under public scrutiny may posture for the audience, may freeze their views or positions prematurely, and may hesitate to offer proposals or reasons for which they can later be blamed if things go wrong.96 As for substance, transparency can frustrate the achievement of programmatic or policy goals themselves. Where security policy is at stake, secrecy is sometimes necessary to surprise enemies or to keep them guessing. Finally, one must take account of the incentives of the actors who expose the facts—especially journalists who might reward presidents who give them access by portraying their decisionmaking in a favorable light.97 We will take up the costs of credibility shortly.98 In general, however, the existence of costs does not mean that the credibility-generating mechanisms are useless. Quite the contrary: where the executive uses such mechanisms, voters and legislators can draw an inference that the executive is well-motivated, precisely because the existence of costs would have given an ill-motivated executive an excuse not to use those mechanisms. 2NC- AT: Perm CP Severance- it’s a voting issue for fairness and education --- justifies aff conditionality, killing neg CP and DA ground A. Curtail means to restrict Vocabulary.com (http://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/curtail) To curtail something is to slow it down, put restrictions on it, or stop it entirely. If I give up cake, I am curtailing my cake-eating. B. Restrictions are prohibitions – Supreme Court of Delaware 83 (THE MAYOR AND COUNCIL OF NEW CASTLE, a municipal corporation of the State of Delaware, Plaintiff Below, Appellant, v. ROLLINS OUTDOOR ADVERTISING, INC., Defendant Below, Appellee, No. 155, 1983, 475 A.2d 355; 1984 Del. LEXIS 324, November 21, 1983, Submitted, April 2, 1984, Decided) The term "restrict" is defined as: To restrain within bounds; to limit; [**9] to confine. Id. at 1182. The Supreme Court of the United States has recognized that HN5the term "regulate" necessarily entails a possible prohibition of some kind. That Court has stated: "It is an oft-repeated truism that every regulation necessarily speaks as a prohibition." Goldblatt v. Hempstead, 369 U.S. 590, 592, 8 L. Ed. 2d 130, 82 S. Ct. 987 (1962). The Supreme Court of Massachusetts in reviewing a statute containing language similar to that found in 22 Del.C. § 301 (which empowered municipalities to "regulate and restrict" outdoor advertising on public ways, in public places, and on private property within public view) held that the statute in question authorized a town to provide, through amortization, for the elimination of nonconforming off-site signs five years from the time the ordinance was enacted. The court held that the Massachusetts enabling act: Conferred on the Legislature plenary power to regulate and restrict outdoor advertising . . . . Although the word "prohibit" was omitted from [the enabling act], it was recognized that the unlimited and unqualified power to regulate and restrict can be, for practical purposes, the power to prohibit [**10] "because under such power the thing may be so far restricted that there is nothing left of of it." (Citations omitted.) The court continued its discussions of the two terms by stating: The distinction between regulation and outright prohibition is often considered to be a narrow one: "that regulation may take the character of prohibition, in proper cases, is well established by the decisions of this court" . . . quoting from United States v. Hill, 248 U.S. 420, 425, 63 L. Ed. 337, 39 S. Ct. 143 (1919). John Donnelly and Sons, Inc. v. Outdoor Advertising Board, Mass. Supr., 369 Mass. 206, 339 N.E.2d 709 (1975). We hold that, through Article II, Section 25 of the Delaware Constitution and 22 Del.C. § 301, the General Assembly has authorized New Castle to terminate nonconforming off-site signs upon reasonable notice, that is, by what has come to be known as amortization. We hold that the power to "regulate and restrict" as such term applies to zoning matters includes the power, upon reasonable notice, to prohibit some of those uses already in existence. C. Distinction between exercise and restrict --- the CP is an exercise McFadden ‘8 (Daniel McFadden, Boston College Law Review, 49 B.C. L. Rev 1131, Retrieved 6/1/2013 from Lexis/Nexis) ("Whether or not the President has independent power, absent congressional authorization, to convene military commissions, he may not disregard limitations that Congress has, in proper exercise of its own war powers, placed on his powers." (citing Steel Seizure, 343 U.S. at 637 ( Jackson, J., concurring))); Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Res. Def. Council, 467 U.S. 837, 842-43 (1984) (stating that, in an administrative law context, "the [C]ourt, as well as the agency, must give effect to the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress"); Little v. Barreme, 6 U.S. (2 Cranch) 170, 177-78 (1804) (declaring unlawful a military order authorizing captures on the high seas because the order exceeded authority granted by Congress). But see David J. Barron & Martin S. Lederman, The Commander in Chief at the Lowest Ebb--Framing the Problem, Doctrine, and Original Understanding, 121 HARV. L. REV. 689, 766 (2008) (concluding that, although the Court has accepted the proposition that Congress may restrict executive military activity, the Court has not ruled out the possibility that the executive retains some inherent and inviolable military authority). 2NC- AT: Perm Do Both Links to net benefit: (A) External checks trigger backlash against Obama --- both international and domestically (B) Perception of the micromanagement by the plan causes military backlash Ruffaa et al ’13 [Chiara Ruffaa, Department of Peace and Con?ict Research, Uppsala University, Christopher Dandekerb, Department of Peace and Con?ict Research, Uppsala University, Pascal Vennessonc, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, “Soldiers drawn into politics? The in?uence of tactics in civil –military relations,” June, Small Wars & Insurgencies, Vol. 24, No. 2, 322–334, http://www.kcl.ac.uk/kcmhr/publications/assetfiles/other/Ruffa2013politics.pdf] Actions in the theater of operation may have consequences for civil–military¶ relations back home. Furthermore, the desired objectives to be achieved have¶ shifted. Recent literature has agreed on ‘a shift away from the idea of the pursuit¶ of victory to that of success’ speci?cally at ‘establishing security condition’.16¶ Another feature of contemporary operations is the ‘process of dispersion of¶ military authority to lower levels of the command chain’.17 The dispersion of¶ military authority combines coercive and hierarchical elements typical of a¶ military organization with ‘group consensus’ and persuasive forms of authority¶ and it has led to the emergence of different leadership styles.18While sometimes¶ combined with micromanagement, this dispersion has led to greater autonomy for¶ soldiers in the ?eld and to a reduced control. Military operations have traditionally¶ been exceptional environments but in contemporary missions decisions often¶ have to be taken without orders.19 To be sure, communication technology has¶ encouraged both decentralization and centralization. Still, it is only a technology¶ and much depends on culture and organization of the user. This becomes¶ particularly dif?cult to control when soldiers have wider margins of maneuver.¶ These interventions, Afghanistan and Iraq in particular, are ‘wars of contested¶ choice’, meaning that notwithstanding their differences they are not of existential¶ necessity.20 To complicate things further, politicians get involved while the¶ operation is ongoing; they sometimes change the political objectives during the mission or they have a moral and politically unrealistic view of the political¶ objectives to be achieved. This is the result of a combination of two constituent¶ elements, of what has been called the ‘dialectic of control’: dispersion and¶ micromanagement.21 Dispersion occurs when the military authority is dispersed¶ across levels of command; while micromanagement refers to a growing tendency¶ of centralizing control.22 Dispersion and micromanagement lead to a¶ compression of the three levels of war, namely strategic, operational, and¶ tactical.23 While these two elements may seem at odds with each other, they are¶ in fact connected. Micromanagement matters as much as dispersion. The tensions¶ between micromanagement – which refers to a centralized control and a topdown process – and diffusion lead to inconsistencies between orders given from¶ the top (without in-depth knowledge of the context) and diffusion of the level of¶ command. While potentially effective for operational activities, micromanagement risks being potentially frustrating when soldiers have to carry out activities¶ that range from humanitarian tasks to building bridges because they need to¶ assess on the ground where this is needed. Thus communications technologies are¶ double edged: (a) technology allows for either dispersion with local actors being¶ able to use a common picture with others to make local decisions that nonetheless¶ conform to the strategic principles set down by higher authority, or (b) they allow¶ senior of?cers to micromanage as they think they know best because they can see¶ the detail that the lower levels can not. The key point here is that which direction¶ is taken – (a) or (b) – depends on factors such as the command culture of the military organization; the personality and orientation of senior of?cers; and the¶ political nervousness/sensitivity/choices of ministers worried or not about what is¶ going on ‘down there’ and the consequences for the mission, their reputation, and¶ that of the government of which they are a part. These elements taken together¶ have created a set of conditions that have changed soldiers’ role in operations and¶ have made the tactical level more relevant and altered the ways in which they¶ connect to politicians and the political process. That triggers an independent nuclear war impact Cohen ‘97 [Eliot, PhD from Harvard in political science, Professor of Strategic Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at the Johns Hopkins University, Director of the Strategic Studies Program at SAIS, served as Counselor to the United States Department of State under Secretary Condoleezza Rice from 2007 to 2009, http://www.fpri.org/americavulnerable/06.CivilMilitaryRelations.Cohen.pdf] Left uncorrected, the trends in American civil-military relations could breed certain pathologies. The most serious possibility is that of a dramatic civil-military split during a crisis involving the use of force. In the recent past, such tensions did not result in open division. For example, Franklin Roosevelt insisted that the United States invade North Africa in 1942, though the chiefs of both the army and the navy vigorously opposed such a course, favoring instead a buildup in England and an invasion of the continent in 1943. Back then it was inconceivable that a senior military officer would leak word of such a split to the media, where it would have reverberated loudly and destructively. To be sure, from time to time individual officers broke the vow of professional silence to protest a course of action, but in these isolated cases the officers paid the accepted price of termination of their careers. In the modern environment, such cases might no longer be isolated. Thus, presidents might try to shape U.S. strategy so that it complies with military opinion, and rarely in the annals of statecraft has military opinion alone been an adequate guide to sound foreign policy choices. Had Lincoln followed the advice of his senior military advisers there is a good chance that the Union would have fallen. Had Roosevelt deferred to General George C. Marshall and Admiral Ernest J. King there might well have been a gory debacle on the shores of France in 1943. Had Harry S. Truman heeded the advice of his theater commander in the Far East (and it should be remembered that the Joint Chiefs generally counseled support of the man on the spot) there might have been a third world war. Throughout much of its history, the U.S. military was remarkably politicized by contemporary standards. One commander of the army, Winfield Scott, even ran for president while in uniform, and others (Leonard Wood, for example) have made no secret of their political views and aspirations. But until 1940, and with the exception of periods of outright warfare, the military was a negligible force in American life, and America was not a central force in international politics. That has changed. Despite the near halving of the defense budget from its high in the 1980s, it remains a significant portion of the federal budget, and the military continues to employ millions of Americans. More important, civil-military relations in the United States now no longer affect merely the closet-room politics of Washington, but the relations of countries around the world. American choices about the use of force, the shrewdness of American strategy, the soundness of American tactics, and the will of American leaders have global consequences. What might have been petty squabbles in bygone years are now magnified into quarrels of a far larger scale, and conceivably with far more grievous consequences. To ignore the problem would neglect one of the cardinal purposes of the federal government: “to provide for the common defense” in a world in which security cannot be taken for granted. Only the CP triggers Congressional follow-on and avoids confrontation Brzezinski ‘12, national security advisor under U.S. President Jimmy Carter (Zbigniew, 12/3/12, Obama's Moment, www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/12/03/obamas_moment) In foreign affairs, the central challenge now facing President Barack Obama is how to regain some of the ground lost in recent years in shaping U.S. national security policy. Historically and politically, in America's system of separation of powers, it is the president who has the greatest leeway for decisive action in foreign affairs. He is viewed by the country as responsible for Americans' safety in an increasingly turbulent world. He is seen as the ultimate definer of the goals that the United States should pursue through its diplomacy, economic leverage, and, if need be, military compulsion. And the world at large sees him -for better or for worse -as the authentic voice of America. To be sure, he is not a dictator. Congress has a voice. So does the public. And so do vested interests and foreign-policy lobbies. The congressional role in declaring war is especially important not when the United States is the victim of an attack, but when the United States is planning to wage war abroad. Because America is a democracy, public support for presidential foreign-policy decisions is essential. But no one in the government or outside it can match the president's authoritative voice when he speaks and then decisively acts for America. This is true even in the face of determined opposition. Even when some lobbies succeed in gaining congressional support for their particular foreign clients in defiance of the president, for instance, many congressional signatories still quietly convey to the White House their readiness to support the president if he stands firm for "the national interest." And a president who is willing to do so publicly, while skillfully cultivating friends and allies on Capitol Hill, can then establish such intimidating credibility that it is politically unwise to confront him. This is exactly what Obama needs to do now. 2NC- Politics NB OLC deflects loss/blame on the President Posner ‘11 - Kirkland & Ellis Professor, University of Chicago Law School (Eric A. Posner, “Deference To The Executive In The United States After September 11: Congress, The Courts, And The Office Of Legal Counsel”, http://www.harvard-jlpp.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/PosnerFinal.pdf)  However, there is an important twist that complicates the analysis. The president may choose to publicize OLC’s opinions. Naturally, the president will be tempted to publicize only favorable opinions. When Congress 22 claims that a policy is illegal, the president can respond that his lawyers advised him that the policy is legal. This response at least partially deflects blame from the president. There are two reasons for this. First, the Senate consented to the appointment of these lawyers; thus, if the lawyers gave bad advice, the Senate is partly to blame, and so the blame must be shared. Second, OLC lawyers likely care about their future prospects in the legal profession, which will turn in part on their ability to avoid scandals and to render plausible legal advice; they may also seek to maintain the office’s reputation. When OLC’s opinions are not merely private advice, but are used to justify actions, then OLC takes on a quasi-judicial function. Presidents are not obliged to publicize OL C’s opinions, but clearly they see an advantage to doing so, and they have in this way given OLC quasi-judicial status. No opposition to the CP Posner ‘11 - Kirkland & Ellis Professor, University of Chicago Law School (Eric A. Posner, “Deference To The Executive In The United States After September 11: Congress, The Courts, And The Office Of Legal Counsel”, http://www.harvard-jlpp.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/PosnerFinal.pdf)  In such a case, a favorable advisory opinion from a neutral legal body that has credibility with Congress will help the President. 49 OLC approval of Policy L would cause political opposition (to the extent that it is based on the mistaken belief that Policy L is unlawful) to melt away. Thus, the OLC enables the President to engage in Policy L, when without OLC participation that might be impossible. True, the OLC will not enable the President to engage in Policy I, assuming OLC is neutral. Indeed, OLC’s negative reaction to Policy I might stiffen Congress’s resistance. Nevertheless, the President will use the OLC only because he believes that on average, the OLC will strengthen his hand.  2NC- Solvency Wall CP is competitive and solves the case ---- Coordination with OLC can ensure executive action Borrelli et al 2000 - Professor of Government Chair of the Government and International Relations Department, Connecticut College (Maryanne Borrelli, Karen Hult, Nancy Kassop, “The White House Counsel’s Office”, http://whitehousetransitionproject.org/files/counsel/Counsel-OD.PDF) The White House Counsel’s Office is at the hub of all presidential activity. Its mandate is to be watchful for and attentive to legal issues that may arise in policy and political contexts in which the president plays a role. To fulfill this responsibility, it monitors and coordinates the presidency’s interactions with other players in and out of government. Often called “the president’s lawyer,” the Counsel’s Office serves, more accurately, as the “presidency’s lawyer,” with tasks that extend well beyond exclusively legal ones. These have developed over time, depending on the needs of different presidents, on the relationship between a president and a Counsel, and on contemporary political conditions. The Office carries out many routine tasks, such as vetting all presidential appointments and advising on the application of ethics regulations to White House staff and executive branch officials, but it also operates as a “command center” when crises or scandals erupt. Thus, the more sharply polarized political atmosphere in recent years has led to greater responsibility and demands, as well as heightened political pressure and visibility, on the traditionally low-profile Counsel’s Office. The high-stakes quality of its work has led to a common sentiment among Counsels and their staff that there is “zero tolerance” for error in this office. In sum, the Counsel’s Office might be characterized as a monitor, a coordinator, a negotiator, a recommender, and a translator: it monitors ethics matters, it coordinates the president’s message and agenda with other executive branch units, it negotiates with a whole host of actors on the president’s behalf (not the least of which is Congress), it recommends myriad actions to the president, and it translates or interprets the law (whether it is the Constitution, federal rules and regulations, treaties or legislation) for all executive branch officials. Past Counsels have lamented that there is no job description for this office, while the opening quote from Peter Wallison makes clear that even if there was, it would be all-consuming and all-inclusive of everything that goes in and out of the president’s office. In simple terms, the Counsel’s Office performs five basic categories of functions: (1) advising on the exercise of presidential powers and defending the president’s constitutional prerogatives; (2) overseeing presidential nominations and appointments to the executive and judicial branches; (3) advising on presidential actions relating to the legislative process; (4) educating White House staffers about ethics rules and records management and monitoring adherence; and (5) handling department, agency and White House staff contacts with the Department of Justice (see Functions section). In undertaking these responsibilities, the Counsel’s Office interacts regularly with, among others, the president, the Chief of Staff, the White House Office of Personnel, the Press Secretary, the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, the Attorney General, the Office of Management and Budget (on the legislative process), the General Counsels of the departments and agencies, and most especially, the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice (see Relationships section). In addition to the Counsel, the Office usually consists of one or two Deputy Counsels, a varying number of Associate and Assistant Counsels, a Special Counsel when scandals arise, a Senior Counsel in some administrations, and support staff. Tasks are apportioned to these positions in various ways, depending on the Counsel’s choices, though most Counsels expect all Office members to share the ongoing vetting for presidential appointments (see Organization and Operations section). Certain responsibilities within the Office are central at the very start of an administration (e.g., vetting for initial nominations and shepherding the appointment process through the Senate), while others have a cyclical nature to them (e.g., the annual budget, the State of the Union message), and still others follow an electoral cycle (e.g., determining whether presidential travel and other activities are partisan/electoral/campaign or governmental ones) (see Organization and Operations). There is, of course, the always unpredictable (but almost inevitable) flurry of scandals and crises, in which all eyes turn to the Counsel’s Office for guidance and answers. Watergate, Iran-contra, Whitewater, the Clinton impeachment, and the FBI files and White House Travel Office matters were all managed from the Counsel’s Office, in settings that usually separated scandal management from the routine work of the Office, so as to permit ongoing operations to continue with minimal distraction. Among the more regular tasks that occur throughout an administration are such jobs as directing the judicial nomination process, reviewing legislative proposals (the president’s, those from departments and agencies, and bills Congress has passed that need the Counsel’s recommendation for presidential signature or veto), editing and clearing presidential statements and speeches, writing executive orders, and determining the application of executive privilege (see both Relationships and Organization and Operations sections). Perhaps, the most challenging task for the Counsel is being the one who has the duty to tell the president “no,” especially when it comes to defending the constitutional powers and prerogatives of the presidency. Lloyd Cutler, Counsel for both Presidents Carter and Clinton, noted that, in return for being “on the cutting edge of problems,” the Counsel needs to be someone who has his own established reputation…someone who is willing to stand up t o the President, to say, “No, Mr. President, you shouldn’t do that for these reasons.” There is a great tendency among all presidential staffs to be very sycophantic, very sycophantic. It’s almost impossible to avoid, “This man is the President of the United States and you want to stay in his good graces,” even when he is about to do something dumb; you don’t tell him that. You find some way to put it in a very diplomatic manner. (Cutler interview, pp. 3-4) LAW, POLITICS AND POLICY A helpful way to understand the Counsel’s Office is to see it as sitting at the intersection of law, politics and policy. Consequently, it confronts the difficult and delicate task of trying to reconcile all three of these without sacrificing too much of any one. It is the distinctive challenge of the Counsel’s Office to advise the president to take actions that are both legally sound and politically astute. A 1994 article in Legal Times warned of the pitfalls: Because a sound legal decision can be a political disaster, the presidential counsel constantly sacrifices legal ground for political advantage. (Bendavid, 1994, p. 13) For example, A.B. Culvahouse recalled his experience upon arriving at the White House as counsel and having to implement President Reagan’s earlier decision to turn over his personal diaries to investigators during the Iran-contra scandal. Ronald Reagan’s decision to turn over his diary - that sits at the core of the presidency. …You’re setting up precedents and ceding a little power. But politically, President Reagan wanted to get it behind him. (Bendavid, 1994, p. 13) Nonetheless, Culvahouse added, the Counsel is “the last and in some cases the only protector of the President’s constitutional privileges. Almost everyone else is willing to give those away in part inch by inch and bit by bit in order to win the issue of the day, to achieve compromise on today’s thorny issue. So a lot of what I did was stand in the way of that process...” (Culvahouse interview, p. 28) Because of this blend of legal, political and policy elements, the most essential function a Counsel can perform for a president is to act as an “early warning system” for potential legal trouble spots before (and, ultimately, after) they erupt. For this role, a Counsel must keep his or her “antennae” constantly attuned. Being at the right meetings at the right time and knowing which people have information and/or the necessary technical knowledge and expertise in specific policy or legal areas are the keys to insuring the best service in this part of the position. C. Boyden Gray, Counsel for President Bush, commented: “As Culvahouse said -- I used to say that the meetings I was invited to, I shouldn’t go to. …It’s the meetings I wasn’t invited to that I’d go to.” (Gray interview, p. 26) Lloyd Cutler noted that ….the White House Counsel will learn by going to the staff meetings, et cetera, that something is about to be done that has buried within it a legal issue which the people who are advocating it either haven’t recognized or push under the rug. He says, “Wait a minute. We’ve got to check this out,” and goes to the Office of Legal Counsel and alerts them and gets their opinion. But for the existence of the White House Counsel, the Office of Legal Counsel would never have learned about the problem until it was too late. (Cutler interview, p. 4) One other crucial part of the job where the legal overlaps with the policy and the political -- and which can spell disaster for Counsels who disregard this -- is knowing when to go to the Office of Legal Counsel for guidance on prevailing legal interpretations and opinions on the scope of presidential authority. It is then up to the White House Counsel to sift through these legal opinions, and to bring into play the operative policy and political considerations in order to offer the president his or her best recommendation on a course of presidential action. Lloyd Cutler described how this process works: Executive order establishing transparency of targeting decisions resolves drone legitimacy and resentment Daskal ’13 (Jennifer Daskal, Fellow and Adjunct Professor, Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law, Georgetown University Law Center, April 2013, ARTICLE: THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE BATTLEFIELD: A FRAMEWORK FOR DETENTION AND TARGETING OUTSIDE THE "HOT" CONFLICT ZONE, 161 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1165) 4. Procedural Requirements Currently, officials in the executive branch carry out all such ex ante review of out-of-battlefield targeting and detention decisions, reportedly with the involvement of the President, but without any binding and publicly articulated standards governing the exercise of these authorities. n163 All ex post review of targeting is also done internally within the executive branch. There is no public accounting, or even acknowledgment, of most strikes, their success and error rates, or the extent of any collateral damage. Whereas the Department of Defense provides solatia or condolence payments to Afghan civilians who are killed or injured as a result of military actions in Afghanistan (and formerly did so in Iraq), there is no equivalent effort in areas outside the active conflict zone. n164 Meanwhile, the degree of ex post review of detention decisions depends on the location of detention as opposed to the location of capture. Thus, [*1219] Guantanamo detainees are entitled to habeas review, but detainees held in Afghanistan are not, even if they were captured far away and brought to Afghanistan to be detained. n165 Enhanced ex ante and ex post procedural protections for both detention and targeting, coupled with transparency as to the standards and processes employed, serve several important functions: they can minimize error and abuse by creating time for advance reflection, correct erroneous deprivations of liberty, create endogenous incentives to avoid mistake or abuse, and increase the legitimacy of state action. a. Ex Ante Procedures Three key considerations should guide the development of ex ante procedures. First, any procedural requirements must reasonably respond to the need for secrecy in certain operations. Secrecy concerns cannot, for example, justify the lack of transparency as to the substantive targeting standards being employed. There is, however, a legitimate need for the state to protect its sources and methods and to maintain an element of surprise in an attack or capture operation. Second, contrary to oft-repeated rhetoric about the ticking time bomb, few, if any, capture or kill operations outside a zone of active conflict occur in situations of true exigency. n166 Rather, there is often the time and need for advance planning. In fact, advance planning is often necessary to minimize damage to one's own troops and nearby civilians. n167 Third, the procedures and standards employed must be transparent and sufficiently credible to achieve the desired legitimacy gains. These considerations suggest the value of an independent, formalized, ex ante review system. Possible models include the Foreign Intelligence [*1220] Surveillance Court (FISC), n168 or a FISC-like entity composed of military and intelligence officials and military lawyers, in the mode of an executive branch review board. n169 Created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 1978, n170 the FISC grants ex parte orders for electronic surveillance and physical searches, among other actions, based on a finding that a "significant purpose" of the surveillance is to collect "foreign intelligence information." n171 The Attorney General can grant emergency authorizations without court approval, subject to a requirement that he notify the court of the emergency authorization and seek subsequent judicial authorization within seven days. n172 The FISC also approves procedures related to the use and dissemination of collected information. By statute, heightened restrictions apply to the use and dissemination of information concerning U.S. persons. n173 Notably, the process has been extraordinarily successful in protecting extremely sensitive sources and methods. To date, there has never been an unauthorized disclosure of an application to or order from the FISC court. An ex parte review system for targeting and detention outside zones of active hostility could operate in a similar way. Judges or the review board would approve selected targets and general procedures and standards, while still giving operators wide rein to implement the orders according to the approved standards. Specifically, the court or review board would determine whether the targets meet the substantive requirements and would [*1221] evaluate the overarching procedures for making least harmful means-determinations, but would leave target identification and time-sensitive decisionmaking to the operators. n174 Moreover, there should be a mechanism for emergency authorizations at the behest of the Secretary of Defense or the Director of National Intelligence. Such a mechanism already exists for electronic surveillance conducted pursuant to FISA. n175 These authorizations would respond to situations in which there is reason to believe that the targeted individual poses an imminent, specific threat, and in which there is insufficient time to seek and obtain approval by a court or review panel as will likely be the case in instances of true imminence justifying the targeting of persons who do not meet the standards applicable to operational leaders. As required under FISA, the reviewing court or executive branch review board should be notified that such an emergency authorization has been issued; it should be time-limited; and the operational decisionmakers should have to seek court or review board approval (or review, if the strike has already taken place) as soon as practicable but at most within seven days. n176 Finally, and critically, given the stakes in any application namely, the deprivation of life someone should be appointed to represent the potential target's interests and put together the most compelling case that the individual is not who he is assumed to be or does not meet the targeting criteria. The objections to such a proposal are many. In the context of proposed courts to review the targeting of U.S. citizens, for example, some have argued that such review would serve merely to institutionalize, legitimize, and expand the use of targeted drone strikes. n177 But this ignores the reality of their continued use and expansion and imagines a world in which targeted [*1222] killings of operational leaders of an enemy organization outside a zone of active conflict is categorically prohibited (an approach I reject n178). If states are going to use this extraordinary power (and they will), there ought to be a clear and transparent set of applicable standards and mechanisms in place to ensure thorough and careful review of targeted-killing decisions. The formalization of review procedures along with clear, binding standards will help to avoid ad hoc decisionmaking and will ensure consistency across administrations and time. Some also condemn the ex parte nature of such reviews. n179 But again, this critique fails to consider the likely alternative: an equally secret process in which targeting decisions are made without any formalized or institutionalized review process and no clarity as to the standards being employed. Institutionalizing a court or review board will not solve the secrecy issue, but it will lead to enhanced scrutiny of decisionmaking, particularly if a quasi-adversarial model is adopted, in which an official is obligated to act as advocate for the potential target. That said, there is a reasonable fear that any such court or review board will simply defer. In this vein, FISC's high approval rate is cited as evidence that reviewing courts or review boards will do little more than rubber-stamp the Executive's targeting decisions. n180 But the high approval rates only tell part of the story. In many cases, the mere requirement of justifying an application before a court or other independent review board can serve as an internal check, creating endogenous incentives to comply with the statutory requirements and limit the breadth of executive action. n181 Even if this system does little more than increase the attention paid to the stated requirements and expand the circle of persons reviewing the factual basis for the application, those features in and of themselves can lead to increased reflection and restraint. Additional accountability mechanisms, such as civil or criminal sanctions in the event of material misrepresentations or omissions, the granting of far-reaching authority to the relevant Inspectors General, and meaningful ex post review by Article III courts, n182 are also needed to help further minimize abuse. Conversely, some object to the use of courts or court-like review as stymying executive power in wartime, and interfering with the President's Article II powers. n183 According to this view, it is dangerous and potentially unconstitutional to require the President's wartime targeting decisions to be subject to additional reviews. These concerns, however, can be dealt with through emergency authorization mechanisms, the possibility of a presidential override, and design details that protect against ex ante review of operational decisionmaking. The adoption of an Article II review board, rather than an Article III-FISC model, further addresses some of the constitutional concerns. Some also have warned that there may be no "case or controversy" for an Article III, FISC-like court to review, further suggesting a preference for an Article II review board. n184 That said, similar concerns have been raised with respect to FISA and rejected. n185 Drawing heavily on an analogy to courts' roles in issuing ordinary warrants, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel concluded at the time of enactment that a case and controversy existed, even though the FISA applications are made ex parte. n186 [*1224] Here, the judges would be issuing a warrant to kill rather than surveil. While this is significant, it should not fundamentally alter the legal analysis. n187 As the Supreme Court has ruled, killing is a type of seizure. n188 The judges would be issuing a warrant for the most extreme type of seizure. n189 It is also important to emphasize that a reviewing court or review board would not be "selecting" targets, but determining whether the targets chosen by executive branch officials met substantive requirements much as courts do all the time when applying the law to the facts. Press accounts indicate that the United States maintains lists of persons subject to capture or kill operations lists created in advance of specific targeting operations and reportedly subject to significant internal deliberation, including by the President himself. n190 A court or review board could be incorporated into the existing ex ante decisionmaking process in a manner that would avoid interference with the conduct of specific operations reviewing the target lists but leaving the operational details to the operators. As suggested above, emergency approval mechanisms could and should be available to deal with exceptional cases where ex ante approval is not possible. Additional details will need to be addressed, including the temporal limits of the court's or review board's authorizations. For some high-level operatives, inclusion on a target list would presumably be valid for some set period of [*1225] time, subject to specific renewal requirements. Authorizations based on a specific, imminent threat, by comparison, would need to be strictly time-limited, and tailored to the specifics of the threat, consistent with what courts regularly do when they issue warrants. In the absence of such a system, the President ought to, at a minimum, issue an executive order establishing a transparent set of standards and procedures for identifying targets of lethal killing and detention operations outside a zone of active hostilities. n192 To enhance legitimacy, the procedures should include target list reviews and disposition plans by the top official in each of the agencies with a stake in the