This Imperial President

 by

           M. Richard Maxson
  
       These are dangerous times because this is a lawless presidency. The president's willingness to violate the "The Framers would have been appalled that you can have very clear violations of the Constitution, but literally no one can actually get a hearing to review them," according to Jonathan Turley, a legal scholar and professor at George Washington University Law School.

Constitution and the deafening silence from Capitol Hill foreshadows the beginnings of the end of our Republic. We have the emergence of what is often called an imperial presidency, something that we have resisted for generations.

      The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. It established the three branches of government, and it delegated "all legislative powers" to Congress. American law rarely uses the word "all." Yet the Framers chose that word precisely to confine law writing to Congress and to prevent a president from altering federal law by the selective manner of his enforcement of it and thereby effectively rewriting it.

      The same Framers sought to guard against the same evils by compelling the president to swear at the commencement of his terms in office that he will "faithfully" enforce the laws. The use of the word "faithfully," like the use of the word "all," is intended to assure voters that they can count on a president who will do the job they hired him to do by enforcing federal laws, not evading them, and by enforcing them as Congress has written them, not as the president might wish them to be. 

      Presidential law writing violates the presidential oath of office, steals power from Congress, disrespects an equal branch of the government and, when unchecked, accumulates such power in the executive branch that it effectively transforms the president into a menacing tyrant who rejects his constitutional obligations and limitations. The American political system is being corrupted by a White House that doesn’t feel bound by the rule of law. …the law increasingly means whatever President Obama says it does on any given day.

     The Obama Administration has also announced that it arbitrarily will be ignoring one of the requirements in the ACA law. The president has modified the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), as of this date, 29 times, by changing its various dates of effectiveness for some but not for others.  He has done all of this on his own, with no input from Congress. He has even threatened to veto any congressional effort to enact into law the very changes he alone has made. Changing an unambiguous statutory mandate requires the approval of Congress. It is basic Constitutional law, but then this President has often decided the law is whatever he says it is. (Note: see Fascism- Websters)

       Until the Truman administration, there were no rules or guidelines outlining what a president could or could not do through an executive order. The rules and limitations were provided by the Supreme Court  in the case of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer. The Supreme Court ruled that a president could not make law; the Supreme Court ruled that a president could only clarify or act to further an already existing law.

     There are 156 Members of the House of Representatives and 55 Senators in the U.S. Congress who are lawyers. Not a single one of them does not know that the President has over-reached and is acting in an unconstitutional manner. Not a single member does not know that the historical precedent being set by this president is dangerous to the Republic. They were recently reminded of this by Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley (see:  http://youtu.be/nqiIZOyNC4A ) The deafening silence from Capitol Hill and our so-called "free" media is a frightening sign that our form of government is changing rapidly right in front of our eyes.