Obama admits: “I changed the law”

When President Obama announced his executive actions on immigration before Thanksgiving, he claimed that his position on using presidential authority to change US immigration policy had not changed. The president had repeatedly denied that he had the authority to take such action in the past according to a Politifact analysis. Last week the president openly admitted that his executive actions changed US immigration law, a power that rests solely with Congress according to the Constitution.

The moment of clarity took place on Nov. 25 as the president spoke at an event in Chicago. As reported by NBC Chicago, three hecklers in the audience interrupted Mr. Obama’s speech to protest the deportation of immigrant families.

The president listened to the protesters for some time and then responded. The NBC video cuts short the president’s response, but a CSPAN video captures the Obama’s complete answer. After pleading for quiet, the president says:

I understand you may disagree, but we’ve got to be able to talk honestly about these issues. Now you are absolutely right that there have been significant numbers of deportations. That’s true. But what you are not paying attention to is the fact that I just took an action to change the law. Now... so that’s point number one. Point number two, the way the change in the law works is that we are reprioritizing how we enforce our immigration laws generally.

Where the defenders of the president’s actions justified them on the grounds of “prosecutorial discretion,” a decision not to prosecute offenders, the president openly acknowledged that he “changed the law.” Under the Constitution, “all legislative powers” are “vested in a Congress.” Since changing the law is a legislative function, the president’s statement is tantamount to an admission that he exceeded his authority.

Moreover, there are limits to prosecutorial discretion. A White House Office of Legal Counsel memo that was released to provide legal cover for Obama’s actions stipulates that the president “cannot, under the guise of exercising enforcement discretion, attempt to effectively rewrite the laws to match its policy preferences.” The memo also states that to be lawful, non-enforcement decisions must be made on a case-by-case basis.

The president’s off-the-cuff comments in Chicago explicitly violate the parameters set by the White House memo. The president admits that he is changing immigration law “generally” in a manner that will affect “everyone.”

 

Read the full article on Examiner.com

Conservative immigration reform is best answer to Obama

When President Obama announced his unilateral version of immigration reform last week, he had several goals. The most obvious goal was to divide and demoralize the Republican Party in the wake of its overwhelming victory in the midterm elections. Just as important and ambitious, Obama hoped to strike a stake through the heart of a burgeoning movement among minorities to vote for Republicans.

The effect of Obama’s first goal is plain to see. Republicans are angry, but split over how to respond to Obama’s amnesty. Some conservatives are calling for a repeat of the disastrous government shutdowns of the past while others are once again calling for the president’s impeachment. The Republican leadership will have a difficult time reigning in the various factions of the party and presenting a coordinated and effective response.

President Obama’s second goal is an attempt to shore up minority voting blocs, in particular Hispanics, which have traditionally supported Democrats. More than a third of Hispanic voters cast their ballots for Republicans according to an Examiner analysis of exit polls from the 2014 midterms. In an era where the country is evenly divided, such a defection makes it almost impossible for Democrats to win. The president hopes that the Latinos will be sufficiently grateful for the amnesty to vote Democrat in the future. An over-the-top Republican reaction that could be portrayed as racist would also benefit future Democratic candidates as well as put Republicans on the defensive before the new Congress is even seated.

The Republican response to the president’s gambit should be in two phases. First, the Republicans should take a strong, principled stand against Obama’s executive action and explain to the country why his action is unconstitutional. Second, rather than just saying no, Republicans must present the country with a viable alternative.

The first phase, Republican resistance, should point out that the president does not have the authority to legislate his own immigration laws. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is already doing this by publicizing the 22 times that President Obama denied that he had the authority take unilateral action on immigration.

A Fact Check analysis of polls, points out that most Americans support immigration reform, but oppose the president’s unilateral version of it. Unfortunately, during the current lame duck session of Congress in which Democrats still hold a Senate majority, there is little that they can do to resist. With another funding crisis for the federal government looming in December, President Obama’s obvious and transparent plan is to goad Republicans into a repeat of last year’s disastrous government shutdown. Rather than walking into the president’s trap, the GOP should wait until January when they will have the upper hand.

When the Republicans take control of the Senate in January, there will be many more tools at their disposal to combat President Obama’s executive overreach. First and most obvious, Republicans will control the budgeting process. The Republican House can pass a budget that does not fund the president’s amnesty programs, but which keeps other parts of the federal government operating. This would put President Obama in the position of having to veto the budget and risk a government shutdown or accepting a defeat. While the 2013 shutdown was blamed on Republicans, the blame in this case would rest solely with the president, who would also be defending an unpopular position.

Second, the Republicans could refuse to confirm any of President Obama’s appointees until the president backs down. Unlike a government shutdown, few Americans would feel any effects of a halt to Senate confirmations. There would be no stories of closed parks, halts to government checks, or layoffs of federal employees. The Obama Administration itself would bear the brunt of the confirmation boycott.

Third, the GOP can file another lawsuit against President Obama. The Constitution gives Congress the power to make laws while the president is tasked with enforcing the laws Congress passes. While the president does have some limited discretion in enforcing laws, he does not have the authority to “adopt a general policy that is so extreme as to amount to an abdication of its statutory responsibilities” according to a Justice Department memo cited by The Volokh Conspiracy. Congress could sue to have the president enforce the laws as they are written. The downside to this strategy is that unless the Supreme Court agrees to expedited handling of the case, President Obama might be out of office before it is resolved.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Republicans have to come up with an alternative to the president’s action. There is an old saying that the best revenge is living well, but, in this case, the best revenge may be passing a conservative immigration reform bill. This is especially true if the bill can garner enough Democratic support to override an Obama veto.

A majority of Americans realize that the current immigration system is broken and in need of overhaul. In addition to unprotected borders, there is no system to track immigrants or visitors who enter the country but overstay visas. There is also no reliable way for employers to verify immigration status of their employees, even though Pew Research estimates that more than five percent of American workers are illegal immigrants. The legal process can take decades for immigrants who follow the law. Highly skilled workers who could benefit the U.S. economy are turned away to work for foreign competitors while unskilled laborers stream across the border.

It will not be enough to simply roll back President Obama’s executive action. The immigration problem and Democratic attempts to use it to divide the country will persist until there is meaningful reform. The Republicans must put forth a reform of their own to fill the vacuum. In addition to the border security measures favored by conservatives, reform must include a fair method of dealing with the millions of illegal immigrants already in the country. Most polls indicate that a majority of Americans favor a path to legality, although not necessarily a path to citizenship or amnesty.

A major problem for Republican leaders is convincing the anti-immigration members of their own party to support reform ideas that are popular with the rest of the country. The far-right members of the GOP scuttled immigration reform under President Bush and last year under President Obama. In so doing, they set the stage for the president’s unilateral amnesty. To these Republicans, any immigration reform is seen as amnesty and any Republican advocates for such reforms are denounced as RINOs. Republican leaders will have to work with leaders of the anti-reform caucus, notably Ted Cruz, in order to pass such a bill. President Obama is undoubtedly counting on such opposition from the right to put the Republicans between a rock and a hard place.

To pacify the right, immigration reform should definitely include strong border security provisions, but it must address the other problems with the current system as well. The carrot for illegals should be a tough but fair way of handling those already in the country if they come out of the shadows. The stick would be strong workplace enforcement and stiffer penalties for future illegal aliens. The legal immigration system should be streamlined to encourage prospective Americans to follow the law.

President Obama’s executive strategy is a desperate attempt to divide Republicans while raising the morale of the Democratic base after a humiliating defeat. If Republicans can wait until January and rein in their anti-immigration reform faction, they have a good chance of beating the president at his own game. The stakes are high. President Obama’s actions are an unprecedented attempt to circumvent Congress and the democratic progress that do not bode well for the future of the United States if left unchecked.

Read the full article on Examiner.com

How the Constitution allows Obama to decree amnesty

In the wake of the breakdown of congressional negotiations on immigration reform, President Obama has announced his intention at a White House press conference to “make some tough choices to meet the challenge -- with or without Congress.” Many observers believe that this portends new executive action on the part of the president to issue an amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. While there is doubt on the part of some that Obama can issue sweeping changes to the immigration system by Executive Order, the Constitution does allow the president to unilaterally issue an amnesty and his past actions prove that he would be willing to take that step.

Red State’s Dan Spencer points out that, as late as 2011, Barack Obama eschewed the notion that he could unilaterally change congressionally enacted immigration laws. The president said, “This notion that somehow I can just change the laws unilaterally is just not true…. There are laws on the books that I have to enforce.”

Less than a year later, Obama reversed himself and unilaterally halted deportations of young illegal immigrants. According to CNN, Obama’s election policy change applied to “people younger than 30 who came to the United States before the age of 16, pose no criminal or security threat, and [who] were successful students or served in the military.”

Law professors John Yoo and Robert Delahunty argued that Obama’s policy change was unconstitutional. Under the Take Care Clause, the president has a constitutional duty to enforce the laws. Nevertheless, the policy has gone unchallenged since 2012 and has become de facto law.

The most obvious executive action by the president would be to simply enlarge his previous policy of stopping deportations for certain illegal aliens. There is no way of knowing what the terms of such a new policy would be, but it could conceivably include any illegal immigrants who do not have criminal records.

Another option that rests on a more firm legal footing would be for President Obama to simply issue a blanket amnesty for all illegal aliens. As pointed out on the Wounded American Warrior blog, “amnesty” is defined as a pardon issued to a large group of individuals. Under Article II Section 2, the president has the constitutional authority to issue pardons to illegal aliens.

Observers ranging from Rush Limbaugh to the Huffington Post agree that issuing a blanket pardon to illegal aliens would be a constitutional course of action for President Obama. In the analysis of the Huffington Post, a pardon would not allow illegals to become U.S. citizens or legal residents, but it would remove the threat of deportation or other punishments. This would have the effect of leaving illegal aliens in a permanent legal limbo, able to continue their lives in the United States, but unable to access the rights of privileges of legal residency.

Such a blanket pardon is not unprecedented. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter issued a blanket pardon to hundreds of thousands of men who were accused of dodging the draft during the Vietnam War. Another controversial presidential amnesty was Andrew Johnson’s pardon of former Confederates after the Civil War.

A presidential pardon of illegal aliens would not solve the problem of illegal immigration. It would most likely make it worse by providing a new incentive for immigrants to enter the country illegally. Any permanent solution would still require congressional action. If this is true, why would President Obama take the step of issuing a unilateral amnesty?

The obvious conclusion is that President Obama believes that executive action on immigration will help Democrats in this year’s midterm elections. Obama’s halt to deportations was widely credited with helping sway Hispanic votes in 2012. Examiner’s analysis of 2012 exit polls found that immigration was the issue that most damaged Republican candidates. Aaron Blake of the Washington Post writes that executive action in 2014 might not be as effective as it was in 2012.

Rush Limbaugh theorizes that Obama might also issue pardons in an effort to goad Republicans into an impeachment attempt. Limbaugh believes that impeachment would unite the fragmented leftist coalition in defense of the president and cement a Democratic victory in 2016. Recently, Democrats have been using the prospect of impeachment as a fundraising tool.

With Congress in recess and the Democrats increasingly desperate with regard to their chances in November, the odds are good that President Obama will follow through on his threat to act on his own. At this point, the only certainty is that such a move would sow confusion in the upcoming congressional elections and further inflame passions on both sides in the immigration debate.

Read the full article on Examiner.com

Follow me on Facebook or Twitter

Obama and George Washington on executive power

Obama’s quotes are from two different speeches, but follow the same line of thought:

Remarks by the president to the National Council of La Raza, July 25, 2011:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/07/25/remarks-president-national-council-la-raza

Remarks by the president at the Denver Police Academy, April 3, 2013:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/04/03/remarks-president-reducing-gun-violence

Future of GOP may depend on immigration reform

The immigration reform bill is headed to the House of Representatives and an uncertain future. The Senate passed the bill overwhelmingly on Thursday with a 68-32 vote. Fourteen Republican senators joined the entire Democratic caucus to pass the bill.

The immigration reform bill is likely to face strong Republican opposition in the House, but many conservatives argue that passage of the bill will be a boon to Republicans. As previously reported by Examiner, Republicans lost an embarrassing percentage of the Hispanic and Asian vote in 2008 and 2012. The GOP won only 31 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2008 and did even worse in 2012 with 27 percent. Likewise, the percentage of Asians voting for the GOP declined from 35 percent in 2008 to 26 percent in 2012.

It wasn’t always this way. As recently as 2004, George W. Bush won 44 percent of the Hispanic vote and 43 percent of Asians according to exit polls from the Roper Center. In 2000, Bush won 35 and 41 percent of those groups respectively. Bob Dole in 1996 won 21 percent of Hispanics and 48 percent of Asians. George H.W. Bush won 25 percent of Hispanics and 55 percent of Asians in 1992 and 30 percent of Hispanics in 1988. The fluidity of these statistics indicates that other minority groups are far less solid in their support of Democrats than are blacks, who only voted less than 90 percent Democrat in 1992 when Ross Perot split the vote.

At the same time, the number of white voters as a percentage of the electorate has been declining. In 1988, 85 percent of voters were white. By 2004, the number had declined to 77 percent. In 2008, the percentage of white voters fell to 74 percent and, in 2012, reached an all-time low of 72 percent.

It should be noted that Republican support from Hispanics peaked in 2004 after George W. Bush proposed an immigration reform bill. It should also be noted that Republican support from Hispanics cratered after Mitt Romney proposed “self-deportation” of illegal aliens, an idea that may have cost him the election according to Forbes.

It is obvious from these statistics that in order to survive the Republican Party must do better to reach out to minorities. It would be difficult for any GOP candidate to do better than among white voters than the 59 percent won by Romney, but it is not longer good enough to do well among white voters.

This does not mean that Republicans should adopt Democratic positions on issues such as affirmative action or compromise their principles. Republican principles work to better the nation as a whole and would be beneficial to everyone, but in order to get this message across Republicans first need to gain credibility with minorities.

Protecting an obviously broken immigration system or espousing a no-mercy system of deportation are not good ways to gain credibility as Mitt Romney learned. To the contrary, the GOP may start losing support from farmers and businessmen who depend on immigrant labor if the party shuts off the supply of illegal workers without replacing it with legal ones. When Georgia passed a strict immigration law two years ago, it led to shortages of farm workers that left crops rotting in the fields.

Good immigration reform should be tough, but fair. Fairness does not include eliminating any possibility of forgiveness for illegal immigrants who came to this country years ago, often as children, and have no other country to go back to. Many others have children who were born in this country and are U.S. citizens. Splitting families up through deportation would not help Republicans at the polls.

According to the U.S. Code, “improper entry by an alien” is a civil infraction punishable by “not more than six months” in jail or fined “at least $50 but not more than $250.” In contrast, according to How Stuff Works, the average U.S. fine for speeding, another often committed infraction, is $150. Should illegal aliens forego all possibility of citizenship ex post facto for such a trivial crime? Eighty-seven percent of Americans say no according to a June 19 Gallup poll. Even 86 percent of Republicans agree.

By agreeing to common sense immigration reform, including enhanced border security, the Republican Party would remove a prime roadblock towards reaching out to minorities. To the contrary, Republicans in Congress could hold out and scuttle a bipartisan agreement that even 86 percent of their own party favors. What would be the result? Republican immigration foes might prevent the current generation of illegals from voting, but they won’t prevent their children who are native U.S. citizens from doing so. If the next generation sees Republicans as racist and unfair, people who don’t want them in the country, then they will most assuredly vote Democrat.

The most likely result would be that President Obama would use his executive powers to grant a de facto amnesty as he did last summer when, five months before the election, he unilaterally announced that the federal government would halt deportation of illegal immigrants who entered the country as children and canceled federal law enforcement agreements with Arizona. Obama has made broad use of executive authority, recently announcing a plan to regulate carbon by decree since Congress has not passed cap-and-trade. He would not shrink from doing the same thing with immigration.

The Democrats would also be certain to pass an amnesty bill if they regain control of Congress. The Democrats failed to address immigration when they controlled all of Congress from 2009 through 2011. They will not make the same mistake twice and a Democratic bill would definitely not include border security provisions craved by conservatives. A Democratic amnesty would ensure that Hispanics would become a permanent Democratic voting bloc.

Perhaps the biggest beneficiaries of an immigration compromise would be Republican presidential candidates in 2016. If the immigration issue is settled prior to the campaign, GOP contenders will not have to balance between the hardliners on the party’s right and moderates in the rest of the country. If Mitt Romney had favored reform, he might have won the general election, but would probably have lost the nomination.

Compromising on immigration reform is not a sure path to minority votes for Republicans. Party members and elected officials will still have to reach out to members of minority groups and show up at events in their neighborhoods. It will, however, remove a major obstacle that prevents minorities from being open to other Republican ideas and principles. The alternative is to stand in the way of a tsunami of public opinion.

Originally published on National Elections Examiner

Court rebukes Obama for recess appointments

A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that President Obama unconstitutionally exceeded his executive authority when he made three recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board last January. As Examiner reported at the time, the president made the recess appointments in spite of the fact that the senate, which confirms presidential appointments, was still conducting pro forma sessions and was not in recess.

According to Article II section 2 clause 3 of the Constitution, the president has the power to fill vacancies that occur while the Senate is in recess. These recess appointments escape the immediate need to be confirmed by the Senate, but expire at the end of the next session of Congress. However, Article I section 5 clause 4 states that neither house of Congress can adjourn for more than three days without the consent of the other. This is done by passing a resolution in both the House and the Senate. In the case of Obama’s appointments, there is no disagreement that Congress was not formally recessed since neither the House nor the Senate had passed a resolution to end the session.

The case was prompted by a lawsuit by Noel Canning, a Pepsi Cola bottling company, according to National Public Radio. The NLRB with its new Obama appointees ruled against the company in a union dispute. The company then sued on the grounds that the Obama appointees were illegal and that without them the NLRB lacked a quorum and could not legally decide the case.

The court ruled on two points. On the first, the Washington Post describes that the three judge panel unanimously decided that a recess under the Constitution means that the Senate must be between sessions and not simply on a break. The court noted that the senate, not the president, decides when it is in recess. The court also ruled on what type of vacancies could be filled by recess appointments. In a stunning limitation of presidential power, two judges held that recess appointments were limited to vacancies that arise during a recess. All three judges were appointed by Republican presidents.

For now, the ruling applies only to the Noel Canning case, but there were many other rulings issued by the NLRB that included Obama’s appointments. These cases could be opened to legal challenges as well under the new precedent. Currently the precedent applies only to the D.C. court of appeals.

The ruling was condemned by the White House and the NLRB. “The decision is novel and unprecedented, and it contradicts 150 years of practice by Democratic and Republican administrations,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said Friday in the Washington Post. “We respectfully but strongly disagree with the ruling.” Carney did not say whether the president would appeal the decision.

In a statement on the NLRB website, the board’s chairman, Mark Pearce, said, “The Board respectfully disagrees with today’s decision and believes that the President’s position in the matter will ultimately be upheld. It should be noted that this order applies to only one specific case, Noel Canning, and that similar questions have been raised in more than a dozen cases pending in other courts of appeals.” The board apparently intends to continue business as usual even though any decisions made are likely to be challenged by the loser.

The decision also calls into question the appointment of Richard Cordray, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Cordray was installed via a recess appointment at the same time as the three members of the NLRB.

During his first term, President Obama lost a series of legal challenges to his unilateral executive actions. Although his administration triumphed when the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare’s individual mandate, Obama lost many other lower profile cases. The Supreme Court upheld most of Arizona’s immigration law in spite of a Justice Department lawsuit. The Obama Administration was held in contempt for its ban on deep water oil drilling and for failing to issue permits to oil companies according to Examiner. The Environmental Protection Agency also suffered a number of legal defeats under Obama for exceeding its authority to regulate carbon and cross-state air pollution under the Clean Air Act. As previously covered by Examiner, several courts have also ruled that Obamacare’s abortion and contraception mandates are unconstitutional burdens on religious freedom. Obama’s unilateral decision to halt deportation of illegal aliens who entered the U.S. as children may also have unconstitutionally bypassed Congress.

Nevertheless, it seems that Obama’s strategy of using executive action when he cannot get Congress to act will continue into his second term. Earlier this month he signed 23 Executive Orders dealing with gun control. According to the Wall St. Journal, the president may also be considering more executive action on environmental issues as well. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Ca.) recently told supporters, “There doesn't have to be a bill. I'm telling you right now, EPA has the authority in the transportation sector, the electricity sector, and the industrial sector under the Clean Air Act” to enact anti-carbon regulations without congressional approval.”

President Obama’s strategy represents a test for the American system of separation of powers. While executive action might move the president’s agenda forward in the short term, as this week’s ruling shows the courts might eventually dismantle much of his legacy because it was enacted via illegal shortcuts.

Originally published on Examiner:

http://www.examiner.com/article/court-rebukes-obama-for-unconstitutional-recess-appointments?cid=db_articles

Polls: Obama changed America for worse

Barack Obama promised change in 2008. In 2012, it seems that many Americans are realizing that change is not always positive. Change can be for the better or for worse.

Unfortunately for voters, while he was campaigning, Barack Obama did not get into many specifics on how he would change America. His slogan, “Change we can believe in,” left people to fill in the blanks for themselves. For many voters, that seems to have led to a giant case of buyer’s remorse.

According to a new poll commissioned by The Hill, a political news site, 66 percent of likely voters agree that Barack Obama has kept his promise of “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” The bad news for Obama is that 56 percent of those polled believe that Obama’s changes have been negative. Only 35 percent believe that Obama has had a positive impact on the country.

This is easy to understand when you consider some of the changes that Obama has wrought. He changed the unemployment rate from 7.8 percent in January 2009 to 8.2 percent today according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This change was the result of spending spree that changed the federal debt from $10.6 trillion in January 2009 to $15.8 trillion today according to Treasury Direct. When stymied by Congress, he changed the constitutional requirement that Congress make the laws by having agencies of the executive branch circumvent Congress and unilaterally enact new legislation. In launching a war in Libya, Obama changed from the traditional policy notifying Congress and seeking approval when going to war. Most notably, President Obama became the first president to change taxes from a source of revenue to a means of forcing American citizens to buy a private product. Obamacare also represented a change from his promise of no individual mandate and lower premiums according to CBS News.

The numbers in the Hill poll are similar to Rasmussen’s Right Direction or Wrong Track poll. In the most recent sampling, Rasmussen found that 62 percent believed the country was on the wrong track. Thirty-two percent disagreed. These polls are troubling for a president who is five months away from re-election and reflect a deep discontent with the president’s job performance even though his personal approval rating is higher.

Obama’s promise can seen as a promise kept, but Americans seem to have learned that not all change is for the better and that things can get worse. Perhaps this fall voters will seek more specifics from candidates and be less willing to accept generalities. Let the voter beware.

 

Read this article on Examiner.com:

http://www.examiner.com/article/poll-obama-changed-country-for-worse

Obama’s imperial presidency

During the Bush presidency, the president was often accused by the left of acting unilaterally as an “imperial president.” It was charged that President Bush often ignored the will of the people and flouted the law with signing statements, acting more like a king than a president.

While the term has rarely been applied to President Obama, the current president’s actions have often been deserving of it. One of the most egregious examples of President Obama’s disregard for the rule of law and the Constitution was his decision to appoint three new members to the National Labor Relations Board and a head to the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last week. Obama styled the appointments as recess appointments although neither the House nor the Senate was in recess.

Article II section 2 clause 3 of the Constitution gives the president the power to fill vacancies that occur while the Senate is in recess. These recess appointments escape the immediate need to be confirmed by the Senate, but expire at the end of the next session of Congress.

Article I section 5 clause 4 states that neither house of Congress can adjourn for more than three days without the consent of the other. This is done by passing a resolution in both the House and the Senate. In this case, there is no disagreement that Congress was not formally recessed since neither the House nor the Senate had passed a resolution to end the session.

President Obama’s claim is that since Congress was not conducting business, he met the constitutional requirement. In the New York Times, White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler said that “the Senate is functionally in recess,” even though neither house had passed a resolution to end the session as required by the Constitution. In fact, Congress acted on the president’s payroll tax bill only a few days before Christmas and had considered other legislation as well.

The recess appointments were a reaction to the failure of the Senate to confirm a number of Mr. Obama’s nominees including Richard Cordray, the nominee to lead the new consumer protection bureau. Republicans had filibustered Cordray’s nomination last month over opposition to the lack of oversight of the new agency. It is worth noting that President Bush declined to make recess appointments while Congress was in session even though Democrats had filibustered a large number of his nominees as well.

President Bush also took criticism for launching the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but he did so with congressional approval in both cases. In contrast, President Obama not only launched his Libyan war without consulting Congress, but he also claimed that the War Powers Act, which requires authorization from Congress when U.S. troops are in combat for more than 60 days, did not apply.

In the past, President Obama has also ignored Congress and the legislative process on other issues as well. A year ago the Atlanta Conservative Examiner detailed how two of President Obama’s agency heads bypassed Congress. The FCC enacted net neutrality rules as administrative law after a federal court ruled that the FCC did not have the authority to regulate the internet. At about the same time, the EPA began regulating carbon emissions in the same manner after Congress failed to pass a cap-and-trade law.

There have been other legislative power grabs by President Obama and his regulatory heads as well. In a well-known case, the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against Boeing because the aircraft manufacturer, which is unionized at its Washington State plants, planned to build a new factory in South Carolina, which is a right-to-work state. The complaint alleged that Boeing was illegally retaliating for strikes by workers in the Washington factories. There is no law preventing unionized companies from opening new locations in right-to-work states. The NLRB and the union withdrew the complaint last month after Boeing’s union workers approved a new contract.

In one case, the Obama administration’s disregard for the law played into the hands of its opponents. After the passage of the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, the Department of Health and Human Services began issuing waivers that allowed favored companies and unions to keep their current health care plans until 2014. According to The Hill, over 1,200 organizations received the waivers. The large numbers of groups requesting waivers allowed Republicans to claim that the health care law was expensive and unworkable.

The problem is the ACA did not authorize the government to grant waivers or deviations from the new health insurance requirements. According to the Daily Caller, the Department of Health and Human Services granted itself the waiver authority in an apparent violation of the law. The article cites Heritage Foundation health policy expert Edmund Haisimaier who noted, “I count twenty-one other sections of PPACA [Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act] in which Congress did grant HHS explicit, new waiver authority with respect to specific provisions. Thus, it is reasonable to presume that if Congress had intended the department to institute a waiver process as part of its implementation of this particular provision, Congress would have said so in the statute.”

Another recent revelation from the Obama White House is reminiscent of Marie Antoinette’s “let them eat cake” moment from the French Revolution. According to a new book, “The Obamas” by New York Times correspondent Jodi Kantor, during the height of the Great Recession in 2009, the Obamas threw a star studded Halloween party. The N.Y. Post reports that the party, put on by Johnny Depp and Tim Burton, coincided with the release of Burton’s film adaptation of “Alice in Wonderland.” In addition to Depp’s Mad Hatter, the party also featured George Lucas’s emissary, the original Chewbacca, mingling with guests. The party was apparently covered up by the White House amid concerns about how it would look amid a time of recession and high unemployment.

President Obama’s tenure has resulted in unprecedented expansion of the powers of the executive branch. His overreach should alarm liberals as well as conservatives because it is likely that his practices will be continued by future presidents of both parties. Americans have a right to expect better of a former professor of constitutional law.

Read this article on Examiner.com:

http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-atlanta/obama-s-imperial-presidency