"The Buck Stops Here!" --Harry S Truman

"Policy where there is no absolute . . . ruler . . . means massed opinion, and the forming of the mass is the whole art and mastery of politics." - Woodrow Wilson

"There is no undefined residuum of (presidential) power."- William Howard Taft

The President is the steward of the people. - Theodore Roosevelt

"When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal." -Richard Nixon

Texts and Learning Resources:

Rules of Engagement:
We are a learning community studying presidential politics. In our discussions we will certainly disagree about issues, but we need to speak civilly and talk to the ideas and not personalize our arguments. The individual student must do all graded work, with no copying from other students. The Honor Code of the University is to be observed in regard to student work. Please check the WebCt course page at least 3 times per week. You are responsible for postings and updates. " I didn't know" is no excuse. Class attendance is required. Successive absences of a week may result in you being dropped from the class for non-attendance. It is your responsibility to inform in writing to the professor any special need in regard to due dates and class attendance in a timely manner. Please use the MAIL in WebCt to communicate with me about your needs in the class. I want you to do well as you can in the class. Let me know if there is anything that may help you in that. Enjoy the opportunity to learn about the world's most powerful elective office.

Accessing WebCT:
· Online courses at AASU are offered throught WebCt. To access WebCt go to the Armstrong homepage http://www.armstrong.edu/ and click on Academics and you will find "Web Coursework." Here you can find information about your Username and Password, which are needed to log into WebCt as well as the portal for logging into WebCt.
· The username is all lower case, the first six characters of your last name and first six characters of your first name. The username is a maximum of 12 characters and if your last name is less then six characters additional letters would be taken from your first name to equal 12 or until last character used. (If you have a dash in your first name or last name the dash is ignored)

Example Username for Stephan Howard: howardstepha
The password is all lower case, the first character of your last name and the last 6 digits of your social security number.
Example Password for Stephan Howard: h123456

Earning Your Grade:

Scoring My Effort: Class Attendance and Preparation:
1. The Angel Award 0-2 absences or late, always prepared to participate in class discussion. 50pts.
2. My Best Effort. 3-4 absences or late, almost always prepared to participate in the class discussion. 40pts.
3. Survivor. 5 or more absences or late, prepared some of the time to participate in the class discussion. 30pts.

All work must be completed by the last day of class. No incompletes are given.

The final grade is based on the total number of points, relative to the highest student in the class using the following scale. You may ask for your class standing at anytime.

A = 95% Never misses class, reads and understands everything
B = 90% reads everything
C = 70% reads everything they understand
D = 60% would rather listen than read
F = 59% Only likes to sign up for courses, thinks reading will give you AIDS