Today marks my 10th year of service for the people of Indiana working in the office of the attorney general. But my career in service to the people of Indiana began much earlier, in 1982, working for then-Senator Dan Quayle in Washington and later in the Bush-Quayle White House as an assistant to the vice president.
This experience in the legislative and executive branches at both the federal and state levels provides a unique perspective on the multi-faceted checks and balances that our founders devised. Our founders understood human nature and created this system of checks and balances because they knew that government is not to be trusted.
The resurgence of public interest in our Constitution is brought home to me regularly by people with pocket copies of our founding document, dog-eared and underlined. Almost daily I am asked fundamental questions on the limits of the federal government's authority, the proper role of the state and the protection afforded individual rights and liberties enshrined within the Constitution. Never in my wildest imagination did I dream I would see such remarkable widespread interest in the fundamental principals of our democracy. For me, it's a great time to be Indiana's attorney general. …show more content…
Although times have certainly changed since the founders wrote our Constitution, systemic checks within government remain necessary. One is that state and federal governments properly check one another's authority. Our president and Indiana's governor have both brought changes through the exercise of authority. Legal challenges to this authority should not be seen as against a particular policy or political, but as part of the healthy checks and balances of
This experience in the legislative and executive branches at both the federal and state levels provides a unique perspective on the multi-faceted checks and balances that our founders devised. Our founders understood human nature and created this system of checks and balances because they knew that government is not to be trusted.
The resurgence of public interest in our Constitution is brought home to me regularly by people with pocket copies of our founding document, dog-eared and underlined. Almost daily I am asked fundamental questions on the limits of the federal government's authority, the proper role of the state and the protection afforded individual rights and liberties enshrined within the Constitution. Never in my wildest imagination did I dream I would see such remarkable widespread interest in the fundamental principals of our democracy. For me, it's a great time to be Indiana's attorney general. …show more content…
Although times have certainly changed since the founders wrote our Constitution, systemic checks within government remain necessary. One is that state and federal governments properly check one another's authority. Our president and Indiana's governor have both brought changes through the exercise of authority. Legal challenges to this authority should not be seen as against a particular policy or political, but as part of the healthy checks and balances of