Remember the time Rick Perry was unable to remember the three federal agencies he would cut if elected president?
Perry, the governor of Texas at the time, was debating other Republican presidential hopefuls back in 2011 when he responded with the following in the middle of one of his answers:
I will tell you: It’s three agencies of government, when I get there, that are gone: Commerce, Education and the — what’s the third one there? Let’s see. … OK. So Commerce, Education and the — … The third agency of government I would — I would do away with the Education, the … Commerce and — let’s see — I can’t. The third one, I can’t. Sorry. Oops.
Yesterday in neighboring Oklahoma, Republican Gov. Mary Fallin committed a similar faux pas this Wednesday when she stumbled over the three branches of government.
During a Wednesday speech at the Tulsa Metro Chamber, Fallin was asked by an audience member about her decision not remove a monument depicting the Ten Commandments from the state Capitol despite a state Supreme Court ruling that the monument violated the state Constitution.
Fallin gave a rambling answer, telling the Chamber that she has asked the Supreme Court to review their ruling and discussed the possibility of the state legislature adopting changes to the Constitution:
I think everybody was a little shocked by the Supreme Court’s decision. I’m disappointed in the Supreme Court’s decision. I respect our Supreme Court justices, they have a job to do, I have a job to do. And I respect them for having a tough job to do, but I don’t agree with them on this particular ruling. The call they made was not the right call. So one of the things that I’ve asked is that the, and the attorney general’s doing this, he asked the Supreme Court to review their decision. That doesn’t mean they’re going to change their mind but I think they need to review their decision. And I think it’s also important that we have time for our legislators, many of whom have expressed this opinion, that they would like to send an amendment to our Constitution to fix any ambiguity and what the article in the Constitution they referred to in their ruling to overturn the Ten Commandments at the state Capitol grounds.
She concluded by saying that she felt the final decision should rest with the people:
You know, there are three branches of our government. You have the Supreme Court, the legislative branch and the people, the people and their ability to vote. So I’m hoping that we can address this issue in the legislative session and let the people of Oklahoma decide.
The problem is the three branches of government are actually the executive, legislative and judicial branches. The executive branch includes the president, vice president, and the cabinet and is in charge of carrying out the laws (with Governor’s serving as the head of the executive branch at the state level). The legislative branch, consisting of the Senate and House of Representatives, is in charge of making laws and the judicial branch is made up of the Supreme Court and other courts.
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