Democrats and Lawlessness

Via-American Spectator

By PETER FERRARA

They’re all wonderfully content to champion their president’s authoritarian rule by decree.

In the third of the six films of the Star Wars saga, the Sith Lord who has infiltrated to become the ruling Chancellor of the democratic republic confederation of peaceful worlds announces to the elected Assembly of representatives of those worlds that to deal with an exaggerated, fabricated crisis, “The Old Republic will be reorganized into the first Intergalactic Empire.” The distracted Assembly responds with polite applause. One of the few characters who understands what is happening remarks wryly, “So this is how the Republic ends. With applause.”

Proving that truth is stranger than fiction, this is happening right now in the United States of America. President Obama has already seized the power to rule by decree, and is doing so virtually every day now.

For those who do not immediately get what is meant by “rule by decree,” let me explain. The Constitution grants the power to legislate, to make laws, to the Congress, which is why it is called “the Legislative Branch.” It grants the power to carry out, or execute, the laws to the President, which is why the President and his Administration are called “the Executive Branch.” The Constitution accordingly specifies that the President’s duty is “to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” It grants the power to interpret and adjudicate the law to the Judiciary, which is why that is called “the Judicial Branch.”

But President Obama does not accept the limitations of his role within this constitutional framework. He is now regularly exercising the power to legislate directly himself, either by announcing on his own supposed authority changes in existing laws that Congress has already passed, or by announcing that he will carry out entirely new laws that Congress never passed, or even refused to pass. These actions are brazen, lawless violations of the Constitution.

The President through his Executive Branch has the power to issue regulations interpreting the law as passed, for purposes of implementation. But all regulations must be authorized by an underlying law passed by Congress. Neither the President nor any agency underneath him in the entire Executive Branch can issue a regulation that contradicts or changes the law that is cited as authorizing it. In other words, if the law says 2014, the President has no authority to say screw it, I say 2015, by regulation or otherwise.

The same is true of Executive Orders. All Executive Orders must be based on authority granted to the President by some law passed by Congress, or by the Constitution itself.

The President does have the authority to refuse to enforce laws he believes are unconstitutional. But he cannot refuse to enforce laws because he disagrees with them, or to gain political advantage, such as delaying implementation of a law until after the next election, attempting to deceive the American people as to what has been enacted until the next election passes. The Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Justice Department exists to advise the President as to his legal powers. And this is what legal opinions issued by that office have said.

IRS Scandal- By The Numbers

Put On a Smiley Face

Via-The American Spectator

By Jed Babbin

Contentless “reform” won’t restore public confidence in NSA and American intelligence gathering.

Nidal Hasan — the Fort Hood mass murderer now on trial — began his court martial defense with the statement that the evidence will show he is guilty. What the evidence will also show, by omission, is how our government institutions ignored the sort of evidence the NSA is supposedly looking for in its global search of telephone data, emails, and other electronic communication.

In his Friday press conference, President Obama didn’t address that problem. Instead, he promised to have an independent panel of experts report on how to fix our intelligence gathering mechanisms. He began, as he always does, by disclaiming responsibility for any problems. He expressed a “healthy skepticism” about the NSA programs when he was a senator, dontcha know. He thus invoked, for the umpteenth time, the “I wasn’t there, I didn’t do it, it was those other guys” defense Eric Holder invented in the Marc Rich pardon mess.

Obama then went on to propose that somebody, someday, “reform” Section 215 of the Patriot Act to limit NSA’s reach into telephone records. (It isn’t Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, of course. It’s Section 501 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which Section 215 rewrote.) Obama didn’t say what those reforms should be or even outline a general proposal. Just “reform,” whatever that means.

Obama also wants to have the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court hear two sides of every search warrant application it hears. Other courts don’t have adversarial proceedings on search warrants, but Obama wants FISC to have them. The problem is that to have a real adversarial proceeding, you need to have someone other than the government — even some sort of governmental guardian ad litem of the people’s Fourth Amendment rights — presenting the adversary’s case on the warrant application.

All of the “reforms” Obama proposed should be of no comfort to anyone concerned that the NSA or other intelligence agencies are listening where they shouldn’t or reading what isn’t meant for their eyes. What Obama proposed is that our intelligence gathering on terrorist activities continue as it has for the past dozen years with a smiley face sticker on them and some additional bureaucracy cluttering up the landscape.

There’s a lot wrong with this picture. We know, for example, that the FISC has authorized collection of telephone “metadata” on all 120 million of Verizon’s telephone customers. But we know that the answer to this apparent overreach isn’t to make our intelligence gathering less effective. The answer is to make congressional oversight of NSA, and the Supreme Court’s oversight of FISC’s actions, more effective and make public the evidence that this is so.

The other solution is to adopt the metaphysical philosophy contained in the three words that appear on the front of every claymore mine: Front Toward Enemy.

That, in the intelligence context, means that Americans aren’t the problem. Yes, for every Nidal Hasan there are millions of Americans who aren’t Muslim jihadis eager to shout “Allah Akbar” while shooting their fellow Americans.

The problem isn’t us: it’s those other guys. And the problem lies not with us, but with them and those governmental illusionists who insist that what Hasan did wasn’t terrorism but “workplace violence.”

Some of us, including myself, believe that 99.9% of our antiterrorist intelligence gathering should be aimed at those Islamists in foreign nations who pose the proximate danger of terrorist acts against us. And we believe that it already is. But that position is harder and harder to defend when all we have is Gen. Alexander’s word that NSA has stopped dozens of possible attacks. We don’t disbelieve him, but we lack the information to support him if, as we expect, his statements are true. He can’t make the specifics public, we expect, because to do so would probably reveal too much of our methods and sources of intelligence gathering.

In Obama’s Friday presser, he recognized that it isn’t enough for him to have confidence in these intelligence gathering programs, the American people have to share that confidence. But none of the “reforms” he proposed will engender it.

That’s because those reforms aren’t directed at the problems people perceive with the programs and because the administration sounds like the sleazy car salesman in the old Isuzu commercial who smiled and said, “trust me.” It’s impossible to believe the message when the messenger is someone who has already lied to you repeatedly.

Whether or not the president is serious about reforming Section 501 of FISA — and that is always in doubt — Congress has to come to its own conclusions about what should be done. None of this is going to be easy, but all of it needs to be done.

Let’s start at the end and work our way back to the beginning. As I’ve written, not only do we need better oversight of NSA and the other intel agencies, but we need the Senate and House intelligence committees to take it upon themselves to tell us a lot more about what their oversight efforts are accomplishing. If they’re satisfied that NSA isn’t abusing its authority, why are they? What have they concluded that we can gain understanding from and, from that understanding, achieve some confidence in the intelligence agencies’ work?

When we see the FISC granting orders allowing the gathering of data on 120 million Americans, it’s impossible to believe the court is doing its job. How is it requiring the government to pare down its requests for access to information? That’s only one of many questions the chief judge of the FISC should be answering publicly, if necessary at the direction of the Supreme Court, which has administrative responsibilities for all U.S. federal courts.

Last and largest among the problems is the fact that our intelligence community was horsed around with after 9/11 to its detriment. It was reorganized twice, shuffled around (does anybody believe that the Homeland Security Department should be analyzing or disseminating intelligence? If you do, go to the back of the class), and otherwise made a bureaucratic muddle.

Way back when the Director of National Intelligence was being created, long before it proved to be a useless bureaucratic appendage to intelligence gathering, I wrote that establishing the DNI was the wrong approach. What I wrote then and will repeat now, is that there needs to be legislation that will force upon our intelligence agencies the same kind of culture of cooperation that reformed our military and made it the most effective force on earth (at least until 2009).

That culture was created by the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986. It forced the military to cooperate in joint efforts across the board. “Jointness” — an awkward word even by Pentagon standards — unifies the armed services so that we no longer have instances where the Marines can’t talk to the Air Force because their radios can’t get the same frequencies.

The whole intelligence community is still divided into individual fiefdoms that sometimes cooperate and too often don’t. Enacting a Goldwater-Nichols reform of the intel community (and doing away with the DNI in favor of a Director of Central Intelligence who would actually direct a centralized intelligence agency) is the answer.

Tinkering with one section of FISA isn’t going to solve these problems. Whether it even needs to be done is something we can’t conclude without a whole lot more information than we have now. Members of Congress who are asked to vote on FISA changes will — and should — demand to have that information about NSA’s actions, the FISC’s oversight, and what the intelligence committees are doing.

Obama was right on one thing Friday. The NSA leaks made by Edward Snowden haven’t given us a basis for a good debate on intelligence gathering. They’ve only served to inflame rhetoric without giving anyone proof that anything has been done illegally or unconstitutionally.

It’s time for the congressional intelligence committees to start doing their job. We need more tough oversight, more information about how that’s being done, and a very serious Goldwater-Nichols oriented effort to reform the intelligence community. With that, we can have confidence in what’s going on. Without it, we can’t.

Why Obamacare Threatens Immigration Reform

Via-NRO

In delaying the employer mandate, Obama shows his disregard for the rule of law.

By John Fund

Chuck Todd, the political director of NBC News, startled much of Washington on Sunday morning when he announced on Meet the Press that White House aides he’s spoken to have lost confidence that immigration reform will pass. He reported that “suddenly the White House doesn’t see a path” to passing a bill through the House this year.

There are many reasons why immigration reform is in trouble, ranging from the fact that immigration is not currently a burning political issue to the inherent complexity and internal contradictions of a 1,200-page bill.

But there is another less-discussed reason. The Obama administration’s instinctive dishonesty and contempt for the rule of law are finally catching up with it. Few Republicans in the House — even those who devoutly want immigration reform — trust the Obama administration to enforce with consistency and integrity anything that passes Congress.

Take the 900-page monstrosity of a law that’s been dubbed “Obamacare.” When it passed back in 2010, the law was clear on many points. It decreed that beginning in 2014, any company with more than 50 full-time employees would be required to offer them health-care insurance or pay stiff fines. But it’s been impossible, in the three years since the law’s passage, to work out the Byzantine requirements of that mandate. Max Baucus (D., Mont.) said in a congressional hearing he feared that Obamacare’s implementation would result in a “train wreck,” and many other Democrats have come to share his anxiety. White House aides fretted that enforcing the mandate’s timetable would hurt job creation in the run-up to the 2014 midterm elections and put Democratic control of the Senate in jeopardy.
The White House could have handled the problem as the Constitution envisioned and opened up negotiations with Congress to change the law. But it quickly concluded that the Republican House would demand too much in exchange for any adjustment to the law. So instead the administration had a blog item quietly posted on the Treasury’s website just before the July Fourth holiday. Under the Orwellian headline “Continuing to Implement the ACA [Affordable Care Act] in a Careful, Thoughtful Manner,” Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy Mark Mazur announced that enforcement of the employer mandate would be delayed until 2015. A Treasury official claimed that the administration has “longstanding administrative authority to grant transition relief when implementing new legislation like the ACA.” Oh, really? Even though the law is quite clear that the mandate shall be effective as of 2014?

Representative Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee, says the announcement represents “policy by blog post” and that it is “another in a string of extra legal actions” that President Obama has used to evade laws and the intent of Congress. He noted earlier this year that the Obama administration was interpreting the health-care law to provide tax credits in health exchanges even if states refused to set them up.

“As a former constitutional-law teacher, President Obama must know that this action gets into very questionable constitutional territory,” Issa told the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. “It also paves the way for future administrations to simply not enforce parts of Obamacare they don’t believe are functioning well.”

Rick Klein of ABC News concluded that the announcement was “a blow in every conceivable way to the Obama administration — an admission that its signature legislative accomplishment isn’t ready for prime time, just as the law’s critics have been arguing and arguing.”

Ultimately, the greatest damage from delaying the employer mandate may come in the way it solidifies House Republican doubts about the immigration bill. Representative Phil Roe (R., Tenn.), chairman of an Education and Workforce subcommittee, says that he doubts the administration can be trusted to enforce the will of Congress when it comes to border security or any other part of the immigration bill. “They have shown no respect for traditional Constitutional separation of powers, and that makes it difficult to pass laws where the fear is that they will simply ignore the parts they don’t like,” he tells me. The Obama administration has not hesitated to simply ignore the clear language of Obamacare. Why wouldn’t it disregard the immigration bill in the same way? In addition, the Gang of Eight bill is stuffed with instances of discretion – in other words, opportunities for administrative meddling. It includes 222 mentions of the word “may” and 153 uses of “waive.” That’s an awful lot of discretion to hand to an administration that is expert at interpreting laws creatively to suit whatever political advantage it desires.

In the classic 1960s free-market poem “Tom Smith and His Incredible Bread Machine,” an entrepreneur is pursued and prosecuted by an ideologically driven Justice Department on trumped-up charges. Just before he is sentenced, he asks the judge presiding over his trial what is happening to him. “The rule of law, in complex times, has proved itself deficient,” she sneers at him. “We much prefer the rule of men! It’s vastly more efficient.”

But our system wasn’t designed by the Founding Fathers to be efficient. Indeed, it was designed to rein in the arbitrary and capricious use of power. The growing belief that the Obama administration can’t be trusted to respect the rule of law may prove to be one of the biggest obstacles it faces in passing the immigration reform it so powerfully desires.

Where's the special prosecutor?

Via-Chicago Tribune Editorial

The IRS scandal demands an independent investigation

"It's inexcusable, and Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it. I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency, but especially in the IRS, given the power that it has and the reach that it has into all of our lives. ... I'll do everything in my power to make sure nothing like this happens again by holding the responsible parties accountable ...."

— President Barack Obama condemning "misconduct" at the Internal Revenue Service, May 15, 2013

.

All of us understand that IRS misconduct, right? And we know which parties Obama needs to hold accountable. It's obvious, right? End of story:

We learned at the get-go of this scandal that, during a long run-up to the 2012 presidential election, IRS officials extensively hassled conservative groups that had applied for tax-exempt status. Congressional Republicans pounced on this as an attempt to hijack the election.

But wait. Early last week we read that the agency used keywords such as "progressive" to target left-leaning groups, too, for extra scrutiny. "New IRS chief: Lists targeted more than tea partyers," said the Chicago Tribune. "Documents Show Liberals in I.R.S. Dragnet," said The New York Times. Congressional Democrats pounced on the suggestion that the agency had treated conservatives and liberals with equal indignity.

But wait some more. On Wednesday a Treasury Department inspector general undercut the equal-abuse argument: From May 2010 to May 2012, the IRS had flagged for added scrutiny six of the 20 applicant groups with words such as "progressive" in their titles. "In comparison, our audit found that 100 percent of the (292) tax-exempt applications with Tea Party, Patriots or 9/12 in their names were processed as potential political cases" — that is, groups possibly too political to merit tax-exempt status. "While we have multiple sources of information corroborating the use of tea party and other related criteria," wrote Inspector General J. Russell George, "including employee interviews, emails and other documents, we found no indication in any of these other materials that 'progressives' was a term used to refer cases for scrutiny for political-campaign intervention."

Translation: The IRS was overwhelmingly one-sided in scrutinizing applications. And the agency evidently was completely one-sided in subjecting only conservative groups to long processing delays and lengthy, often peculiar requests. Example: The IRS asked an Iowa anti-abortion group "how all of your activities, including the prayer meetings held outside of Planned Parenthood, are considered educational as defined under 501(c)(3) ...."

So that's where things stand — until fresh reporting, a document leak or perhaps a confession sends the story in some new direction. But seven weeks into this scandal, the fact most Americans know best is that ... they still don't know much that's definitive. The murky intrigue over who provoked what at this agency has become a playpen for politicians. Three among many crucial questions still scream for answers:

•Did someone nudge IRS employees to hassle certain groups or did agency officials spontaneously decide to do that?

•Inspector General George has testified that in June 2012, five months before the election, he told top Treasury Department officials of his probe into IRS targeting. Did his news, with its potential to rock the presidential campaign, stop atop Treasury — or did it make its way even higher in the administration?

•At multiple points in 2012, why did top IRS officials repeatedly mislead Congress by not disclosing — in response to highly specific questions — that the agency was targeting conservative groups?

We can only speculate on which tools will unlock the grimy secrets of this egregious misuse of government authority. An ongoing self-examination by the IRS is laughably untrustworthy. The U.S. Department of Justice also is on the case.

But as we wrote May 23, many Americans won't be much interested in what one arm of the Obama administration concludes about the conduct of other arms — the IRS, the Treasury and possibly the White House. There are times when only a special prosecutor has the independence and credibility to resolve such a politically fraught matter.

Why hasn't Attorney General Eric Holder appointed a special prosecutor? The White House, too, should be clamoring for one: The feds are only three months from enrolling Americans in Obamacare, a program that relies on citizens' willingness to have the IRS even more involved in the financial details of their lives.

We applauded when Obama said he would make sure there will be no such future scandal. But lofty pledges aren't enough. The president and his underlings ought to be instructing a special prosecutor to unravel the still mysterious scandal that confronts them today.

Obama lives high on our dime

Via-The Detroit News



Nolan Finley

On the same night I began hunting for the scraps of paper I'll need for my tax return, President Barack Obama, his wife, kids and a bunch of their buddies were enjoying a live concert of Memphis soul music in a White House now closed to the public because of budget sequestration.

I don't begrudge the president a relaxing evening of entertainment, and live is always better than Memorex.

But as I scrounged through drawers and coat pockets in search of anything that might reduce the size of the check I'm going to write tomorrow, I was acutely aware of how my tax dollars are being used.

Defending my freedom and maintaining the avenues of commerce, no problem.

Feeding the hungry and nursing the sick? All good.

But I draw the line at paying for Justin Timberlake and Queen Latifah to serenade a president who, according to the Obama's tax return released Friday, paid a smaller percentage of his income in federal taxes than I will, while earning a lot more.

The same president whose re-election campaign savaged Mitt Romney for his effective tax rate of roughly 15 percent, paid a rate of just 18 percent himself in 2012. That's about half last year's top tax rate; Obama reduced his tax burden the same way Romney did, with hefty deductions.

Nothing stopped him from paying the 39.6 percent of income he declared in January is the "fair share" for wealthy folks like he and Michelle.

He could have voluntarily foregone his deductions, as the tax code allows, and put his money where his mouth is.

But Obama is not about setting examples.

When the sequester spending cuts kicked in last month, not only were White House tours ended, but the administration warned it would have to curtail food inspections, limit forest fire containment and set free hundreds of immigrants who had sneaked into the country without permission.

Obama took the symbolic step of cutting his own pay by 5 percent, and then he went golfing for the 120th time of his presidency. The administration won't say what it costs in transportation and security for each tee-off, but I'd bet it's more than the $74,000 a week needed to keep the White House open for school group tours.

Estimates of the price tag for Obama's getaway weekend this winter to an exclusive Florida golf resort, where he played with Tiger Woods, are $1 million or more.

All families need vacations.

The Obama family vacations have cost taxpayers more than $20 million, and that doesn't include his jaunt to the Final Four or his daughter's spring break in Mexico, accompanied by a plane load of friends and Secret Service agents.

All this high living on the taxpayer's dime comes at a time when the budget deficit tops $1 trillion, the national debt is reaching toward $17 trillion, and a smaller percentage of Americans are working than when Obama took office.

Which raises the question: How can a president so tone deaf appreciate a live concert?

Deceiver in Chief

Via-American Spectator

By Ron Ross

If he loved his country he wouldn’t be wanting to “fundamentally transform” it.

Barack Obama’s most dangerous talent is his ability to make people believe he’s something he’s not. He is not recognized for whom and what he is, especially the fact that he does not like the country he’s governing. He is effective because he has successfully hidden his true objectives. He has convinced his followers that he has their interests at heart, that he cares about them and wants to help them. The key ingredient in his power lies in his ability to deceive. People do not want to believe that he does not like the country. Our country is in collective state of denial.

Barack Obama is arrogant, intolerant, mean, dishonest, vengeful, and ruthless. He does not wish us well. He is considered by many of his supporters to be a savior. In fact, he’s a destroyer. Is that an unfair indictment? Consider the evidence.

The economy is operating far below its potential. Is he doing anything to discover why? Millions of people are unable to find jobs. Does he seem concerned? He has an abysmal ignorance of how a market economy actually works. He doesn’t show the slightest curiosity about the causes of our economic distress.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing and he doesn’t care that he doesn’t know. He’s so incredibility arrogant, he doesn’t think he even needs to know. The very fact that he thought he was qualified to fill the most important office in the world demonstrates his profound arrogance.

Kathleen the Terrible

Via-American Spectator

By DAVID CATRON

Kathleen Sebelius is the most corrupt and arrogant HHS secretary in history.

Among the gifts Nancy Pelosi brings to the House of Representatives is her ability to draw a hearty guffaw from the most jaded observer of American politics. This talent for comedy was on display last Wednesday when she told a group of toadeaters disguised as journalists that she belongs to the anti-corruption party. The Orwellian absurdity of the claim, combined with her trademark vapid expression, was enough to make a cat laugh. I do, however, wish C-SPAN would flash some sort of warning on the screen when the former Speaker is about to deliver one of these howlers. That one caught me unawares with a mouth full of coffee and I had to spend the next ten minutes cleaning off my keyboard and monitor.

In reality, of course, Pelosi and the rest of the Democrats who infest Congress and the Obama administration constitute the most corrupt gang of grifters ever to have descended on Washington and the hapless American electorate. The only real question is: Who is the worst? Many would bestow this dubious honor on Pelosi herself. Others would favor her Senate counterpart, Harry Reid. More than a few would, of course, nominate Eric Holder. And still others would push the suit of President Obama for the “most corrupt” award. All are tough contenders, without a doubt, and each has certainly earned at least a dishonorable mention. Nonetheless, for my money, HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius wins the prize.

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Planting the Seeds of His Own Demise

Via-American Spectator

By Peter Ferrara

The conservative comeback begins now -- on the assumption that a majority of Americans will not welcome a second Great Depression.

Stop that cringing! I can already see the light at the end of the tunnel. And it's not pretty for today's neo-Marxist Democrat party.

The man you see before you as your President today bears a striking resemblance to the main character in a Greek tragedy. He so reeks of hubris. Every word that drops from his lips speaks a haughty derision of the lesser beings not benighted to be a cog in his political machine. All witness Obama the Magnificent, the conqueror of America, which was the world hyperpower, but is now the Sick Man of the 21st Century, en route to terminal illness.

Middle class beware. Did you not hear four years ago Obama the Magnificent bewail that America with 4 percent of the world's population consumes 25 percent of the world's resources? So unfair, you know, the magic incantation of the Obama Regime. He told us that "we just can't keep driving our SUVs, eating whatever we want, keeping our homes at 72 degrees at all times regardless of whether we live in the tundra or the desert, and keep consuming 25% of the world's resources with just 4% of the world's population, and expect the rest of the world to say you just go ahead we'll be fine."

The sloppiness in El Primo's thinking there is revealed by the phrase "the world's resources." But America in reality never consumed any of the world's production. It always only consumed 100% of America's production (including what it traded some of that production for).

That is why previous American Presidents would have said, you got a problem with the American standard of living, you just address your complaint to the Seventh Fleet. But under Obama, America does not even have a Seventh Fleet anymore. We barely even have a First Fleet, and that is doomed to the sequester budget guillotine, on the same road as America's formerly dominant nuclear deterrent.

So much for America's former morally embarrassing global military dominance. And Obama has the same solution for America's former morally embarrassing overconsumption. Reduce America with 4 percent of the world's population to consuming just 4 percent of the world's resources, a decline of 84 percent from its former standard of living. That would be fair, in Obama's eyes. Richard Trumka, call your office.

The Obama Timeline to the Dustbin of History

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