"Obama responds to serious concerns about his administration’s lawlessness with a derisive “so sue me.”
DAVID BERNSTEIN
The lawlessness of the Obama administration: A never-ending story
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/the-lawlessness-of-the-obama-administration-a-never-ending-story/article/2575636#.VjpT1gtg92w.blogger
THE LAWLESS REGIME OF BARACK OBAMA and his ASSAULT ON THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS AND U.S BORDERS
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/12/amnesty-hoax-to-keep-wages-depressed.html
“The Lawlessness of the Obama Administration: A
never-ending story.”
THE PSYCHOPATH WHO WOULD BE DICTATOR FUNDED BY
HIS
CRIMINAL CRONY BANKSTERS AND REELECTED FOR A
THIRD TERM BY
MEXICO
The Obama
Administration’s Unprecedented Assault on the Constitution and the Rule of Law The lawlessness of the Obama administration: A never-ending story
David Bernstein, professor at George Mason Law School, has a new book out titled Lawless: The Obama Administration's Unprecedented Assault on the Constitution and the Rule of Law. For a preview, check out his Volokh Conspiracy blogpost on the top six (not five, as in the headline) examples of lawless conduct by the Obama administration.
Many of these items might be familiar to people who have read my Washington Examinercolumns appearing in February 2013, July 2014 and February 2015, and blogposts appearing in August 2014 and March 2015. Or you might want to go back to my May 2009 column which coined the term "gangster government"—the title of my Examiner colleague David Freddoso's 2011 book Gangster Government: Barack Obama and the New Washington Thugocracy.
It's a subject that provides never-ending grist for a journalist's mill.
November 17, 2015
The Heritage Foundation, Lehrman Auditorium
http://www.heritage.org/events/2015/11/lawless
Overview: In Lawless, George Mason University law professor David E. Bernstein offers a scholarly and unsettling account of how the Obama Administration has undermined the Constitution and the rule of law. He documents how the President has presided over one constitutional debacle after another – from Obamacare to unauthorized wars in the Middle East to attempts to strip property owners, college students, religious groups, and conservative political activists of their rights, and more.
Respect for the Constitution’s separation of powers has been violated time and again. Whether in amending Obamacare on the fly or signing a memorandum legalizing millions of illegal immigrants, the current Administration ignores not only Congress, but also the Constitution’s critical checks and balances.
In Lawless, Professor Bernstein shows how the Constitution as well as the President’s own stated principles have been betrayed. In doing so, serious and potentially permanent damage has been done to our constitutional system and repairs must be addressed by the next President of the United States.
A Pattern of Executive Overreach
Starting in 2010, the IRS, under pressure from congressional Democrats and the White House, engaged in blatant ideologically motivated discrimination against conservative organizations applying for non-profit status.
That the most feared bureaucracy in Washington was making decisions based on illegal political criteria should send a chill down the spine of any American who cares about the First Amendment and the rule of law.
Yet the Department of Justice has refused to indict even IRS official Lois Lerner, who invoked her Fifth Amendment right to silence to avoid incriminating herself in testimony before Congress.
Unfortunately, the failure to prosecute anyone responsible for abusing the IRS’s authority reflects the Obama administration’s broader contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law.
Consider just a few examples:
1.
Going
to war in Libya in blatant violation of the War Powers Resolution, and in
defiance of the legal advice of the president’s own lawyers, based on the
ridiculous theory that bombing the heck out of Libya did not constitute
“hostilities” under the law
2.
Appointing
so-called policy czars to high-level positions to avoid
constitutionally-required confirmation hearings
3.
Modifying,
delaying, and ignoring various provisions of Obamacare in violation of the law
itself
4.
Attacking
private citizens for engaging in constitutionally protected speech
5.
Issuing
draconian regulations regarding sexual assault on campus not through formal,
lawful regulation but through an informal, and unreviewable, “dear colleague”
letter
6.
Ignoring
100 years of legal rulings and the plain text of the Constitution and trying to
get a vote in Congress for the D.C. delegate
7.
Trying
to enact massive immigration reform via an executive order demanding that the
Department of Homeland Security both refuse to enforce existing immigration
law, and provide work permits to millions of people residing in the U.S.
illegally
8.
Imposing
common core standards on the states via administrative fiat
9.
Ignoring
bankruptcy law and arranging Chrysler’s bankruptcy to benefit labor unions at
the expense of bondholders
10.
Trying
to strip churches and other religious bodies of their constitutional right to
choose their clergy free from government involvement.
More
generally, the president has abandoned any pretense of trying to work with
Congress, as the Constitution’s separation of powers requires. He prefers
instead to govern by unilateral executive fiat, even when there is little or no
legal authority supporting his power to do so.
Presidents trying stretch their power as far as they can is hardly news. What is news, however, is that top Obama administration officials, including the president himself, see this not as something to be ashamed of, but as a desirable way of governing, something to brag about rather than do surreptitiously.
Obama behaves as if there is some inherent virtue in a president governing by decree and whim, as if promoting progressive political ends at the expense of the rule of law is proper not simply as a desperate last resort but as a matter of principle.
After all, Obama says, democracy is unduly “messy” and “complicated.” “We can’t wait,” the president intones, as he ignores the separation of powers again and again, ruling instead through executive order.
“Law is politics,” and only politics, according to a mantra popular on the legal left, and therefore the law should not be an independent constraint to doing the right thing politically. Obama seems to agree.
As Obama’s lawlessness has received increased attention from Congress, the (conservative) media, and the general public, the president has been defiant, even petulant. When confronted by allegations of lawlessness, Obama takes no responsibility, and doesn’t even bother to defend the legality of his actions.
Harry S. Truman famously said “the buck stops here.” Obama responds to serious concerns about his administration’s lawlessness with a derisive “so sue me.”
As George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley writes, Obama “acts as if anything a court has not expressly forbidden is permissible.” And in many situations, no one has legal standing to challenge the president’s actions in court—which means that no judge can stop the administration’s lawbreaking.
So sue me? If only we could.
On Tuesday, Nov. 17, David Bernstein will be at The Heritage Foundation at noon for an event about his book, “Lawless: The Obama Administration’s Unprecedented Assault on the Constitution and the Rule of Law.” More details here.
BOOK:
Gangster Government: Barack Obama and the New Washington Thugocracy
- Hardcover: 350 pages
- Publisher: Regnery Publishing; First Edition edition (April 4, 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1596986484
- ISBN-13: 978-1596986480
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