Not czars, but commissars

From Bruce Walker, writing in the American Thinker:

The three dozen or so people that Barack Obama has surrounded himself with to handle this problem or that issue, and yet are not confirmed by the Senate or operating an agency created by Congress, are not really his "czars." These people are, instead, his "commissars." Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany both called those vague, undefined figures appointed by the Leader to carry out his intentions "commissars" (Hollywood never speaks of Nazi commissars for the same reason that it never notes that Nazi Party members called each other "comrade" - the pretense that Nazis and Bolsheviks were polar opposites rather than identical twins is too vital a myth to dispel.)

In our constitutional republic, government does not have a role in every part of life. That is why Congress has to create departments, agencies and administrations. Everything that the federal government does must, in some way, relate to its powers under the Constitution. The first cabinet offices dealt with clear cut federal duties - diplomacy, war, justice, money, and postal services. Before Congress creates a federal office, a threshold question is whether the Constitution allows the work of that office to be done by the federal government. That is the heart of limited government. ...

Read the rest here.