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Feb. 8, 2013
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Jewish World Review
June 20, 2012/ 30 Sivan, 5772
Barack Obama the autocrat
By
Jay Ambrose
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Again and again, presidents overreach their authority. It's always a danger, and maybe there's a penalty such as public disapproval. Richard Nixon got caught in criminal conduct and was forced to resign.
What's the penalty going to be this time? President Barack Obama has been up to some powerful autocratic mischief, but it seems more likely to boost than hurt his re-election chances.
The latest adventure was his decision to stop the deportation of illegal aliens under age 30 who came to the United States before age 15 and have stayed out of legal trouble. There have been whoops and cheers, and there's little question it will increase his support among Latinos whose votes are crucial this election year.
The problem is that the policy runs counter to law and Obama's constitutional pledge to uphold it. Obama himself once said he couldn't leapfrog Congress on this issue, but he did just that. The possibilities of legal reversal seem slim.
Both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have published stories about Obama starting his tenure in a checks-and-balances frame of mind and then converting to a flex-your-muscles point of view. Though he at first wanted to work with Congress, he grew anxious when the Republicans took over the House two years into his administration. Afraid of getting nothing done, he decided to make the most of executive powers and adopted a slogan: "We can't wait."
Thus, the administration did not wait for Congress to enact a cap-and-trade law and instead had the Environmental Protection Agency step in with toughened regulations on greenhouse gases. And thus Obama's team did not wait for Congress to rejigger the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which seemed possible. Instead, the administration started a process of letting states get out from under the education law's demands.
Still other moves indicated Congress just does not matter to this White House. The president engaged the American military in Libya without seeking congressional authorization and made recess appointments without Senate approval. The Constitution allows recess appointments, the problem in this case being that there was no recess under law.
None of these or numerous other power splurges are as bad as President George W. Bush's abuses, some Obama defenders say. Maybe the defenders did not notice that, like Bush, Obama has issued so-called signing statements when signing bills into laws, in effect negating parts of them.
On the terrorism front, Obama ended Bush's tough interrogations -- characterized as torture by many critics -- but continued "rendition," the practice of sending terrorism suspects to foreign prisons where the United States has no control. The president also has continued indefinite detention and warrantless surveillance, and meanwhile has endorsed the right to kill Americans abroad without due process if they are considered enemy combatants.
While some conservatives might applaud some emulations of Bush, they are generally the ones voicing the most outrage over Obama's power abuses. There are, however, concerned liberals. One of the most outspoken is Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University. He has worried that adulation of Obama has led liberals to be soft on his civil liberties violations.
Conservative legal theorist Michael McConnell of Stanford University summed up the hazard of Obama's imperial impudence. Quoted in a Wall Street Journal article March 30, he said that while checks and balances can lead to "gridlock," that's "better than unchecked power in the hands of one person." Others note that if Obama can get away with these power grabs, so might Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney if elected -- and on issues that will make the left as furious as the right is now.
What's at stake are limited government, rule of law and republican governance, and they are presently losing while Obama wins.
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Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado.
Previously:
• 06/18/12:Bradbury's lessons for today
• 06/13/12: Should this leaking administration sink?
• 06/11/12: Simpson bashes back on reform
• 06/05/12: Legalize sugary drinks, ban dangerous drugs
• 06/04/12: Keep America from going Greek
• 06/01/12: Don't believe in Obama's fairy tales
• 05/30/12: Writing a book? Beats prison
• 05/23/12: Student loans fail students
• 05/21/12: Europeanizing America into crisis
• 05/16/12: Obama a bully, too
• 05/15/12: Walker recall vote could swing national pension policy
• 05/07/12: Bumbling, fumbling, benighted, old Washington near tipping point where freedom is done for
• 05/02/12: The Communists cannot be happy
• 04/30/12: There's no objective truth, least of all concerning behavior
• 04/25/12: Forgive the extremist?
• 04/23/12: Educational excellence is a game
• 04/18/12: Obama's interventions help a few by the most autocratic, complicated, ineffective means possible, yet hurt many more
• 04/16/12: Overregulation strikes again: The nanny state threatens to turn us into children
• 04/11/12: Obama is not bonkers
• 04/04/12: Will America vote against authoritarianism?
• 04/02/12: 'Tipping point' on federal restraint approaches
• 03/28/12: Obama truth from an open mike
• 03/21/12: The progressive campaign for voter fraud
• 03/19/12: Public pensions will get us if we don't watch out
• 03/14/12: Politics needs reporting, not speculation
• 03/12/12: Home of the free, the brave, the endangered
• 03/07/12: Obama used Limbaugh as scapegoat
• 03/05/12: Campaign substance lost in media melodrama
• 03/01/12: When Big Brother drowns
• 02/24/12: Obama goes gaseous on gas
• 02/22/12: Political tears for trust in personal empowerment --- except in the bedroom
• 02/17/12: Of cut-off ears and silenced mouths
• 02/15/12: Obama is a joke whose antics aren't funny
• 02/10/12: An energy boom looms, despite Obama
• 02/08/12: Obama's assault on faith
• 02/03/12: Can Romney get serious?
• 01/27/12: Obama is like an Italian ship captain
• 01/25/12: Newt Gingrich's first 100 days
• 01/20/12: Obama's Keystone pipeline lies
• 01/18/12: Critics worse than urinating Marines
• 01/13/12: Ron Paul is a cartoonish character
• 01/11/12: Newt Gingrich upset by Mitt Romney's brilliance
• 01/09/12: How about regulating presidents, too?
• 01/04/12: How America smothers itself
• 12/30/11: A tax break that helps break the nation
• 12/28/11: Watch out for the banana peel, Newt
• 12/21/11: A tale of two men
• 12/16/11: Strange happenings in Russia
• 12/14/11: Tim Tebow is a man of character
• 12/09/11: A populist, envy-mongering fraud divisively exacerbating resentment among different groups of Americans
• 12/07/11: Tax games threaten nation
• 12/05/11: Why Wal-Mart serves us better than Barney Frank
• 11/30/11: Not writing off Newt
• 11/28/11: Answers to the Iranian threat
• 11/23/11: Failure of the incumbency investment
• 11/18/11: Occupiers: Chop off their heads!
• 11/16/11: Obama asks jobless to sacrifice
• 11/09/11: Michael Moore's insufferable occupation
• 11/04/11: Political tipping point is coming
• 11/02/11: Idealogues versus 7 billion
• 10/28/11: Obama games on student loans
• 10/26/11: Wit and quick moves v. humanity and thoroughgoing honesty? It's no contest - or at least shouldn't be
• 10/07/11: Baptists, bootleggers and Wall Street protesters
• 10/05/11: Federal law will get you even if you watch out
• 09/28/11: Leftist bugbears on the march
• 09/23/11: Still hope for coal to help us
• 09/21/11: Obama's Madoff ploy
• 09/19/11: U.S. can't afford to wait until it happens
• 09/14/11: Defending -- and strengthening -- gung ho collectivism
• 09/12/11: A pipeline to better times
• 09/08/11: Obama just keeps destroying jobs
• 09/06/11: Ultra-feminists thwarting justice
• 08/31/11: Corporations are people? Yes, Count the ways
• 08/26/11: What an earthquake tells us about debt
• 08/25/11: The tyranny of scientific consensus
• 08/23/11: Fracking hardly a public health threat
• 08/17/11: Why Obamacare won't control births
• 08/15/11: Balanced budget amendment unbalanced idea
• 08/10/11: Kerry's war on citizen speech
• 08/05/11: Upside to the compromise leaving the door open for obnoxious maneuvers
• 08/03/11: The people who may save America
• 07/29/11: On making deals, Obama is no LBJ
• 07/27/11: The threat behind the debt
• 07/23/11: Mean opposition to means-testing
• 07/20/11: Leftist babble makes debt crisis even worse
• 07/18/11: Time to raise demagoguery ceiling
• 07/13/11: Obama treating treaties badly
• 07/08/11: Is decline of U.S. exaggerated?
• 07/05/11: Not math deficiency, but demagoguery
© 2011, SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
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