The (Lawless) One Strikes Again

When you have as low an opinion of President Obama as I do, it's really hard for him to do anything to surprise me anymore.  Gut the military?  Naturally.  Embrace radical Islam?  Of course.  Bow to world leaders?  Done, done, and done.

So I won't say that this surprises me...but it is rather shocking nonetheless.

Standing behind a podium on a stage just outside Cleveland, President Barack Obama delivered a speech yesterday that will reverberate throughout history. No, its lasting impact will not come because of its soaring rhetoric. Instead, it will make its mark because it was at that moment on a Wednesday afternoon in Ohio that the President announced his plans to act in total and utter disregard of the U.S. Constitution with his illegal appointment of Richard Cordray to serve as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

It’s an astonishingly reckless exercise of executive authority that Heritage’s Todd Gaziano described as a “tyrannical abuse of power.” Never before in the 100-plus years of precedent on the recess appointment power has a President taken such an action while the Senate was still in session. Yet notwithstanding that fact, President Obama yesterday decided that he would be the first.

Here’s why the President finds himself so far outside of constitutional bounds. Under Article II, section 2, clause 2 of the Constitution, the President has the power to fill vacancies that may happen during Senate recesses, as Gaziano writes. In this case, President Obama was seeking to fill the vacancy in the CFPB, a new agency that has come under significant criticism given its unparalleled powers to issue expansive regulations with virtually no accountability. Republicans in the Senate, to date, have refused to confirm the President’s nominees to head up the CFPB, vowing to block Senate approval until reforms are made to the agency. So President Obama has decided to act without their approval by attempting to make a recess appointment. The trouble is that Congress is not in a recess because the House of Representatives never consented, as required under the Constitution, Article I, section 5. That means that the President simply does not have the power to make this appointment.

In order to fully implement his Big Labor union agenda, he plans to appoint several more board members in the coming days, too, all without Senate approval.


All completely unconstitutionally.


His own Department of Justice is telling him that it's unconstitutional.  But he's doing it anyway, and Congress is letting him.


As I said, this is no surprise - he's been broadcasting his desire and willingness to make unilateral and unaccountable moves for months.  Democrats still control the Senate, but that's not stopping them from blaming 'obstructionist' Republicans for getting in the way.  In reality, it's a little thing called the CONSTITUTION that's supposed to be getting in the way of this monarchical unilateralism.  That's kind of how the system was set up, you know?  Or, put another way, what Obama's doing is completely lawless, as Rush Limbaugh explains:

All right, some people in the e-mail have taken exception with my description of Obama as "lawless" and acting outside the Constitution. Let me share with you a quote, and this is from a video. It might have been from yesterday out in Ohio, but it's within the past couple days. Obama said, "When Congress refuses to act -- and as a result, hurts our economy and puts our people at risk -- then I have an obligation as president to do what I can without them." He got applause. "I have an obligation to act on behalf of the American people. I'm not going to stand by while a minority in the Senate puts party ideology ahead of the people that we elected to serve. Not with so much at stake, not at this make-or-break moment for middle class Americans. We're not gonna let that happen."

Now, the Founding Fathers said this is exactly what's supposed to happen! It's called "the separation of powers," and it's to make sure that things like this do not happen, that an all-powerful executive does not run roughshod over the government. But President Obama has just said: Because the Congress won't do what I want them to do I'm gonna do it myself. That is extraconstitutional! That is not the way this government was set up. It was not the idea of the Founders. That's acting outside the Constitution, and there's no question about it -- and the Obama campaign is claiming he's doing all these recess appointments and things like this "to help the economy." Reuters again: "Hammering populist themes that show him to be a champion of the middle class, aides say the president will keep taking steps to show voters he'll make moves on his own to help the economy if Congress refuses to act."

If Congress "refuses to act," it is his job to sit down and talk to 'em and make 'em act and get them to vote the way he wants. He does not have -- unless they grant it to him (and they're doing it, by the way) -- the authority to run roughshod over them. But if they don't stop him, he can do it. We can't. Congress has to stand up for itself. Now, the Democrats run the Senate. I think they're happy for this to happen. Dingy Harry loves for this to happen because they're sitting there blaming it on the House Republicans who have no role in this. It's an election year, so blame the Republicans for it. Folks, it is clearly lawless. If you regard the Constitution as law, this is lawless behavior by an out-of-control, rogue executive. This is what happens in banana republics, tinhorn dictatorships. In places like Venezuela, this is what happens -- all under the guise of populism and helping the middle class.

America is different because we don't have a king or queen.  We have a President, elected by the people, and we have 535 national representatives, also elected by the people.  The balance of power is supposed to rest in equal shares between the Legislative Branch (the Congress, which makes the laws), the Executive Branch (the President, who enforces the laws), and the Judicial Branch (the courts, who uphold or strike down the laws).  Right now, with Congress refusing to stand up to Obama, we have a runaway Executive who is simply ignoring the law and doing whatever he wants to in order to enact his radical Leftist America-destroying agenda.


This is absolutely inexcusable.  This is blatantly obvious.  This is as unconstitutional as it gets.  This man is leading America down the road to self-destruction at all costs, and cannot be allowed to continue.