If the checking of a separate branch of government is necessary, does this not represent a flaw in the basic idea of the government? Did we fundamentally assume each separate branch could not function without corruption?

If this is true, will a cancer of each branch always be existent with the most authoritative branch being predominant?

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"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried" Churchill

Recall the world that was known to the founders: a monarch with nearly absolute power, a parlaiment that was basically his rubber-stamp, and a judiciary that was beholden to him for their very position and was often his personal political and revenge tool.

The founders knew from experience that absolute power does indeed, corrupt absolutely. The separation of powers ensures that no single branch weilds too much power. Corruptive forces are always at work. In the separation of powers the founders realized, correctly, that it is much easier to prevent corruption by appropriate oversight than it is to clean up the mess when that oversight is lacking. The current economic debacle should provide ample evidence that this is true.

Not if the different branches exercise their constitutionally-mandated roles of oversight of the other branches. It is when a branch (most recently, the legislative) abdicates its oversight responsibilities that things get all out of whack.

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Tax & Spend > Borrow & Spend any day.

I reject your reality and substitute my own.

C2H5OH - the cause of and remedy to all problems.

What we have is a government quite similar to a parliamentary one, where checking on the system was in place at the time of the founders. The difference worthy of noting is the king is replaced with a temporary executive, with all the powers of a king in parliamentary system, save the distribution of land.

Do you believe the legislative branch is in the wrong here, leading the executive to an overabundance of power in the very recent past? Or the heightening of a shift toward the executive since the 1970s?

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"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried" Churchill

No, this represents a flaw in human nature...namely, coveting.

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Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum
(To such heights of evil are men driven by religion)

Checks and balances don't work, the three branches have every incentive to collude.

Any group with common interests will contain corruption. Only by checking the groups with other groups that have seperate interests can such corruption be kept in check. It must be balanced to work.
That's the point of checks and balances, to keep any one interest group from running the country.

Government branches are not somehow extraordinary for their possibility of corruption. They just happen to be in a position where corruption is unacceptable... thus the need for anything we can do to limit corruption.

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That information is classified and to be given only on a need-to-know basis...

And I do not need to know.

At first glance the checking seems logical and necessary. But limiting corruption by checking of one system to another and vice versa is like spinning a top, the government is clearly a closed system in this regard. Surely the people will change - the staffs, the politicians, the judges; there is no specific direction where the government is going at a given time, the players cannot achieve any substantial goal unless two branches or all are in line with each other (regardless of partisanship).

Not saying the government should not be audited. It would seem one branch of the system would be better equipped at the judgment of the others, only when void of political initiative. It would allow a directional change to always occur. The most important admission to the idea would be a system to check this branch. Our system of checks and balances is simply not the correct one.

-- This is key to understand, the idea came from a failed system of parliamentary checking on the English king. Granted the king is hardly comparable to the president in breadth of power, but when given enough authority the executive has the obvious opportunity to become as powerful, with or without congressional approval. The idea of checks and balances as set today will fail in due time. Hindering progress is not venerable, it's passé.

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"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried" Churchill

So, just so I'm clear...
Are you saying that the system of checks and balances is not set up right... so the executive can easily break free?
Or are you saying the executive should be more free for greater flexibility?
I can't quite tell what you're getting at.

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That information is classified and to be given only on a need-to-know basis...

And I do not need to know.

The first, given a set of circumstances where the executive must be granted powers outside constitutional ones, or a twist of those rights, this branch will benefit the most. Not that an emperor will arise or something to this effect, but a progression of power toward the executive.

A circular form of checks and balances will give rise to a political dipole at the branch where more power is given (as every republic in history). A linear checking by one branch of the others would not allow this to occur - movement is in one specific direction.

The problem is the legality or checking of the one branch. How does one check a branch of government without involving politics? If the idea of checks and balances is to limit corruption in each branch, which assumes each branch is open to corruption - then we have the greater or lesser of three evils instead of a system which roots out corruption.

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"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried" Churchill

Well, the citizenry provides a check on at least two branches of government, but I do think it is flawed as well. I remember when I first learned about the branches of government in elementary school that I thought some of the checks were weird and that some of them weren't enough, and that their weren't enough of them. I thought the same thing in 8th grade US History/Government class.

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My enduring personal, original quote: Many mistake what should rightly be called "passivism" for pacifism. Pacifism and passivism are COMPLETELY different.
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"I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." --President George W. Bush.
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Everything about the War on Terror(ism) is aggravating.