Executive Power Grab

Now that Barack Obama sees the likelihood of losing Democratic dominance of the U.S. Congress later this year, he's making plans to misuse presidential executive authority, violate the Constitution yet again and "legislate" from the White House.

Word of his intentions came in the form of an article in The New York Times, which, remarkably, did not even hint that such a strategy was improper, illegal or even controversial.

"With much of this legislative agenda stalled in Congress, President Obama and his team are preparing an array of actions using his executive power to advance energy, environmental, fiscal and other domestic policy priorities," the story began.

Rahm Emanuel, the charming White House chief of staff, was quoted as saying: "We are reviewing a list of presidential executive orders and directives to get the job done across a front of issues."

Among the legislative initiatives the executive branch plans to enact are:

— Softening the ban on open homosexuals in the military.

— Instituting new regulations on so-called "heat-trapping gases" responsible for all this warm weather we've been having.

If all this sounds familiar, it is. Way back on July 4, 1998, The New York Times reported that Bill Clinton was going to go the same route four years after the Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives for the first time in a generation.

Then-White House aide Paul Begala was a little less subtle than Emanuel. He explained the approach like this: "Stroke of the pen. Law of the land. Kinda cool."

Of course, it should surprise no one at this point in Obama's administration that he has nothing but contempt for the Constitution, which states in Article 1, Section 1: "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives."

Nowhere in the Constitution will you find any authority given to the president or the executive branch of government to change laws, make laws, institute new regulations or otherwise "legislate." Those powers belong to another branch of government known as the "legislative branch."

Yet, The New York Times, previously known as "the newspaper of record," sees nothing alarming about this plan whatsoever.

"The use of executive authority during times of legislative inertia is hardly new," explained the story.

And so the precedent has been established, explains the Times. The Constitution be damned. The article even goes on to suggest "presidents have logged significant accomplishments through the stroke of a pen."

Example?

"In 1996, on his own authority, Mr. Clinton turned a 2,600-square-mile section of southern Utah into the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, in what was called at the time his boldest environmental move."

What the article didn't mention about this bold "environmental move" was that it had nothing to do with the environment at all. It was payback for at least $1 million in illegal foreign campaign contributions Clinton had received in his 1992 election effort from billionaire James Riady, who was later convicted on those charges.

Four years later, Clinton, with a stroke of the pen, locked up the Utah land, one of the world's largest-known reserves of "clean coal" — the kind that can be burned in power plants without undue harm to the environment.

The largest reserves in the world are in Indonesia, and they are owned by Riady. The founders of this once-great nation really knew what they were doing when they strictly limited the power of the federal government and separated authority between three branches of government.

The president simply has no constitutional power to legislate — never did, never will. Unless, of course, the Constitution is null and void, which, apparently, is exactly what Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel think it is.

To find out more about Joseph Farah and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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