Federal Laws

Yes, the IRS can take your property if you do not pay your taxes. It is called an asset seizure The likelihood of that happening is lower today that it was a few years ago. The IRS is not into seizures right now. They will more than likely levy your bank accounts, wages, or investment accounts before they take your property.

If you need help paying your back taxes, you can find out more information at wallysworldoftaxes.blogspot.com.

The presence of a mailbox does not make parking in front of it illegal. Whether you can park there legally or not usually depends on whether or not it would be a legal area to park if the mailbox weren't there. This is generally speaking, and is not to say that there won't be places where local ordinance prohibits it.

Additional Info: US Postal regulations do not require a postal carrier to deliver mail to a blocked mailbox. If the curbside box cannot be reached from their vehicle they are not required to dismount to place the mail into the box when/if it is obstructed.

A pastor does many, many things; largely depending on the congregation's size and whether or not there are more than one pastor. If the church is large and there is multiple pastor then they are specialized into separate fields, but in an one pastor congregation then he/she does most (if not all) of the following. The first and most obvious is preaching Sunday morning, but this is not as simple as getting in front of a crowd and rambling for 20 minutes. Hours of preparation and prayer go into even the simplest sermon, even a "recycled" sermon-one that the pastor has done years ago but still has the outline, takes considerable work to revise and prepare with. But his/her job isn't over Sunday evening after the services are over.

Throughout the week he/she holds positions in most (if not all) councils or boards that the church offers and it is his/her responsibilty to make as many as possible to ensure everything is running smoothly. There is outreach that needs to be done, and that can look like a hundred different things but most common is visitation of the sick, elderly, or incarcerated, and the means spending a good amount of time with each individual. Beyond visitation he/she may be actively involved in other means of outreach including (but not limited to) street evangelism, school outreachs, homeless shelter work, etc. These outreaches depend largely on the area that the pastor preaches to.

Back in the church proper, when he/she isn't chairing a comittee, working on a sermon, preaching/teaching, he/she is busy with counciling. Numerous issues come past a pastor's desk and congregates will bring a wide range of issues before a pastor to handle, be in marriage issues, personal problems, spiritual questions, etc. etc. etc. He/She also will be involved in, if not directly leading marriage counciling.

That brings me into the next aspect of being a pastor, "the marrying them and burying them" aspect. In other words, involvement and leading of numerous special occasions in a person's life, (in many cases, conversion), baptism, weddings, and burials. Some churches have different milestones like these and differ widely from church to church. These are bittersweet moments for a pastor, especially when he/she is personally invested in the individual(s) that the ceremony is being held for.

These are your standard "9-5" job qualities, things that a pastor knows about atleast a few days in advance and can prepare for. But a pastor's job is far from 9-5. One of the most physically demanding, and spiritually taxing aspects is those moments that you can't be prepared for. That midnight phone call to the hospital because Mr. and Mrs. Smith's 21 year old son is in critical condition because of a drunk driver. A pastor may be there for hours giving comfort and aid to the family and victim. He/She may not have gone to bed yet, and in some cases it'll be Saturday night/Sunday morning and 2-3 sermons in the morning. It is in those moments that they relay entirely on God to pull them through.

Being a pastor is far from an easy job, he/she is continously being thrown into situations that most would want to avoid, tragic accidents, violent and malicious agruements, and pressed with questions that noone can really answer, these normally start "Why would God..." They're job are 24-7-365, and they are part teacher, part psychologist, part CEO, part finicial manager, part therapist, part orator, part embassador, and part solider.

Answer

Constitutionally, there is nothing Congress can do to nullify a US Supreme Court ruling. The Supreme Court is an independent branch of the government, and the final authority on interpretation of law. The Supreme Court may nullify properly challenged legislation as a check on Congress, but the process doesn't work in reverse, with the Legislative branch nullifying Judicial decisions. If it did, the two branches of government would be deadlocked most of the time.

In practical terms, the two actions Congress and the President can take to circumvent a Supreme Court ruling is rewriting the legislation without the unconstitutional provisions; or ignoring the Court's decision altogether. Although they're not supposed to do this, there are plenty of historical examples where the Legislative and Executive branches abrogated the power of the Court and proceeded in opposition to a decision. One important, early example involved John Marshall and his series of ignored opinions concerning the Cherokee, as exemplified by Worcester v. Georgia, 31 US 515 (1832).

Answer

Congress can pass a new law in place of the law struck down by the court; a constitutional amendment would only be necessary when the court addressed point of law was directly related to constitutional issues, i.e., the Bill of Rights, or the Articles.

In the article, for The American Prospect, "Overruling the Court," Leon Friedman wrote:

"In 1982, for example, Congress amended the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to overrule a narrow Supreme Court holding in Mobile v. Bolden, a 1980 decision that addressed whether intentional discrimination must be shown before the act could be invoked. In 1988, Congress overruled another Supreme Court decision (in the 1984 case Grove City College v. Bell) by passing the Civil Rights Restoration Act, which broadened the coverage of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The legislative history of that law specifically recited that "certain aspects of recent decisions and opinions of the Supreme Court have unduly narrowed or cast doubt upon" a number of federal civil rights statutes and that "legislative action is necessary to restore the prior consistent and long-standing executive branch interpretations" of those laws."

Answer

They can propose a constitutional amendment.

To read the article in its entirety, see Related Links, below.

The President has no legislative power "over" Congress (though s/he has one "of" Congress... more on that near the end of this answer). That said, the president has a sort of conditional legislative power over Congress. It's called "the presidential power of veto." This answer will cover a couple other presidential powers which, at least in the short-term, are sort of powers "over" Congress; but, really, in the long-term, they're not.

After both houses of Congress (the House of Representatives, and the US Senate) pass a bill intended to become law, said passed bill is the given to the president to sign. The President then has ten (10) days to either sign it or not sign it, and then, in either case, return the bill to Congress. That's the deadline: 10 days.

If the president signs the bill within ten days, and returns it to Congress; and if Congress is still in session when he does, then the bill becomes law. If the President does nothing -- in other words, if he both doesn't sign the bill, and also doesn't return it to Congress within the ten-day deadline -- and if Congress is still in session at the end of said deadline, then the bill becomes law, even without the President's signature.

However, if the President decides he doesn't like the bill, then he can "veto" it. The word "veto" is Latin for the phrase "I forbid." There are two ways the President may veto... only one of which ensures that the bill won't become law.

If the President refuses to sign the bill, and timely returns it to Congress, unsigned, within 10 days; and if Congress is still in session when he so does, then the President has vetoed the bill, and has stopped it from becoming law...

...but only if Congress decides to accept that from the President and do nothing further. The veto is the President's way of sending a very serious message to Congress telling it that he does not want the bill to become law. In order to ensure that Congress takes that message seriously, the Constitution requires that if Congress wants the bill to become law then it must re-vote on the bill...

...but this time, on that re-vote, Congress must pass the bill by a whopping two-thirds majority. That means that 66% of Congress must all agree that it so wants the bill to become law that it's willing to override the President's veto and make the bill law, even without the President's signature. The Constitution says that Congress's so doing requires a two-thirds majority re-vote on the bill. If Congress does that, then the bill becomes law right then and there, without having to be re-submitted to the President for his signature. Congress, at that point, has overridden the President's veto.

There is, however, a way for the President to veto a bill which will ensure that it won't become law, no matter what. Timing, however, is key to the President's being able to do that; and it can only happen under a very special circumstance, to wit: If Congress submits a bill to the President for his/her signature; and if Congress will no longer be in session by the time the 10-day deadline for the bill's return expires, then all the President has to do to effectively veto the bill is absolutely nothing. By his/her neither signing it, nor not signing it; but, in either case, his/her not returning it to Congress at all; and by Congress's adjourning before the President's 10-day deadline to return the bill either signed or unsigned, the President has effectively vetoed the bill; and because Congress is no longer in session at the end of the 10-day deadline, it may do nothing about the veto. And so, then, the veto really and truly stops the bill from becoming law. That kind of veto is called a "pocket veto." To keep it from happening, most sessions of Congress will never submit a bill to the President for his/her signature within the last 10 days of said session, that is, unless Congress knows, for sure, that the President will quickly sign and return it, before the session ends.

In a sense, then, that's the President's "legislative power" over Congress: the power of veto. But that power is conditional; and only works, absolutely, in the case of a pocket veto. At all other times, if Congress doesn't like the president's veto, then it can override it by a two-thirds majority re-vote, and make the bill law, anyway!

The President also has the power to introduce his/her own bills into Congress, on which Congress must take action, exactly the same as if Congress, itself, had introduced the bill. But that's more a presidential power of Congress, not over it.

The President also has the power, "on extraordinary occasions," according to the Constitution, to call Congress -- either or both houses of it -- into "special session," during periods when Congress is normally in recess, in order to handle emergency situations. That presidential power rarely used, though: the last time was back when Harry Truman was president, in 1948. In all, throughout the entire two-and-a-quarter centuries that there have been US presidents, the presidential power of calling Congress into special session has been used only 27 times (at least as of this writing in April of 2013). And so, then, that presidental power over Congress -- if, indeed, that's what it even is -- is nearly never actually used by most presidents.