Tyr-Ziu Saxnot
09-19-2014, 08:25 AM
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/conncarroll/2014/06/03/obamas-war-on-the-constitution-n1846624
Obama's War on the Constitution
This article first appeared in the June issue of Townhall Magazine.
"You know I taught constitutional law for 10 years, I take the Constitution very seriously,” then-Sen. Barack Obama said while campaigning in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on March 31, 2008.
“The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all,” Obama continued, “and that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m president of the United States of America.”
More than six years later, we now know that Obama never had any intention of taking the Constitution seriously. Instead, he has violated its core provisions at every turn, launching unauthorized wars, rewriting legislation without Congress’ input, and even creating brand new laws out of whole cloth.
When Obama first uttered the phrase, “If Congress won’t act, I will,” he functionally declared war on the U.S. Constitution. And unless Republicans start standing up to Obama’s lawlessness, our republic may never be the same.
EMBRACING BUSH’S WAR POWERS
Obama made his 2008 promise to “reverse” Bush’s power grab after a supporter questioned why Obama had voted for reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2006 after he had promised to vote against the legislation when he was a U.S. Senate candidate in 2003.
In classic Obama fashion, Obama denied all responsibility for his vote. Instead he blamed Bush for issuing executive orders that ignored the limits of existing federal law. Now, six years later, Obama is still presiding over much the same National Security Administration spying program that he once pronounced a “grave threat” to civil liberties, and the Guantanamo Bay detention facility that he said threatened America’s “moral stature in the world,” is also still running strong.
UNAUTHORIZED WAR
Additionally, not only has Obama embraced the war powers he once derided Bush for claiming, but he has expanded them substantially.
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Bush went to Congress for an Authorization for Use of Military Force that he then used as justification for attacking Afghanistan. And a year later, Bush again went to Congress for another AUMF, this time seeking permission to attack Iraq. You can be for or against one or both of these wars, but you cannot argue that Bush did not “go through Congress” before starting them.
Obama, on the other hand, doesn’t believe that he needs to seek permission from Congress before he attacks another country.
Before launching Operation Odyssey Dawn against Libya on March 19, 2011, Obama secured authorization from both the Arab League and the United Nations. But at no point did he ever push for a debate, or vote, in the United States Congress.
Now it is true that presidents have taken military action without specific authorization from Congress in the past. In 1986, for example, President Reagan also bombed Libya. And in 1998, President Clinton launched cruise missiles into Afghanistan and Sudan.
But those actions were both brief and limited responses to specific terrorist attacks on Americans. Reagan bombed Libya for a single day as punishment for their involvement in a bombing of American servicemen in Berlin. Clinton’s cruise missile attack was also limited to a single day and was in direct response to the bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Obama’s attack on Libya, however, lasted seven months, one week, and five days. Countless Libyan military personnel were killed during the campaign, as well as more than 60 civilians according to the United Nations Human Rights Council.
But unlike Reagan and Clinton, who were responding to specific attacks on Americans, Obama acted without any provocation. Libya had not recently attacked America, and was not threatening to, when Obama started bombing the country.
There simply is no constitutional justification for Obama’s unilateral bombing of Libya. Which is why top lawyers at both the Pentagon and the Justice Department told Obama he had no legal right to attack Libya as broadly as he was planning without authorization from Congress.
But instead of deciding the issue democratically, Obama overruled his lawyers and ordered the DOJ to write a new legal memo justifying his decision.
WHEN PRESIDENTS CAN ACT
Presidents have tested the boundary between the executive and legislative powers since the birth of the Constitution. Few tested it as boldly as the 33rd president, Harry Truman, who authorized his Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer to seize the nation’s steel mills at the height of the Korean War.
The day after Truman issued Executive Order 10340 effectively nationalizing the nation’s steel industry, lawyers for Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., along with lawyers from five other major steel companies, immediately filed suit.
Less than a month later, in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v Sawyer, a 6-3 majority ruled against Truman’s seizure, holding that he had no legal authority to seize the nation’s steel mills. Writing for the majority, Justice Hugo Black explained, “The President’s power, if any, to issue the order must stem either from an act of Congress or from the Constitution itself.”
Black went on to note that if Truman wanted to avoid a strike, the Taft-Hartley Act, which Truman had attempted to veto, specifically created a mechanism for him to do so. But Truman completely ignored that route.
Instead, Truman issued an order that Black said, “sets out reasons why the President believes certain policies should be adopted, proclaims these policies as rules of conduct to be followed, and again, like a statute, authorizes a government official to promulgate additional rules and regulations consistent with the policy proclaimed and needed to carry that policy into execution.” [emphasis added]
“In the framework of our Constitution,” Black continued, “the President’s power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a lawmaker. The Constitution limits his functions in the lawmaking process to the recommending of laws he thinks wise and the vetoing of laws he thinks bad. And the Constitution is neither silent nor equivocal about who shall make laws which the President is to execute.”
In other words, it does not matter how many executive orders a president issues. All that matters is that each executive action must have a basis in either the Constitution itself, or an act of Congress.
Unfortunately, far too often, Obama has chosen to completely ignore Congress, and instead act as lawmaker. The following are just a few of Obama’s most egregious constitutional transgressions.
Amazing, he has only been doing this for 6 years now!
His big trick wasn't just his new Unconstitutional Executive Orders but the expansion of existing orders into a completely unrecognizable new edicts.
I started pointing most of this out 6 years ago on my old forum but was derided ,insulted, and called a fool, lunatic, hate monger , racist and liar etc..
Just watch how much more of his completely anti-American socialism , radicalism and muslim appeasing deceptions he spits out in the next two long years!
The maggot is a traitor, just that simple... He came into office to destroy not to secure and lead this nation. Fact ... -Tyr
Obama's War on the Constitution
This article first appeared in the June issue of Townhall Magazine.
"You know I taught constitutional law for 10 years, I take the Constitution very seriously,” then-Sen. Barack Obama said while campaigning in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on March 31, 2008.
“The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all,” Obama continued, “and that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m president of the United States of America.”
More than six years later, we now know that Obama never had any intention of taking the Constitution seriously. Instead, he has violated its core provisions at every turn, launching unauthorized wars, rewriting legislation without Congress’ input, and even creating brand new laws out of whole cloth.
When Obama first uttered the phrase, “If Congress won’t act, I will,” he functionally declared war on the U.S. Constitution. And unless Republicans start standing up to Obama’s lawlessness, our republic may never be the same.
EMBRACING BUSH’S WAR POWERS
Obama made his 2008 promise to “reverse” Bush’s power grab after a supporter questioned why Obama had voted for reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2006 after he had promised to vote against the legislation when he was a U.S. Senate candidate in 2003.
In classic Obama fashion, Obama denied all responsibility for his vote. Instead he blamed Bush for issuing executive orders that ignored the limits of existing federal law. Now, six years later, Obama is still presiding over much the same National Security Administration spying program that he once pronounced a “grave threat” to civil liberties, and the Guantanamo Bay detention facility that he said threatened America’s “moral stature in the world,” is also still running strong.
UNAUTHORIZED WAR
Additionally, not only has Obama embraced the war powers he once derided Bush for claiming, but he has expanded them substantially.
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Bush went to Congress for an Authorization for Use of Military Force that he then used as justification for attacking Afghanistan. And a year later, Bush again went to Congress for another AUMF, this time seeking permission to attack Iraq. You can be for or against one or both of these wars, but you cannot argue that Bush did not “go through Congress” before starting them.
Obama, on the other hand, doesn’t believe that he needs to seek permission from Congress before he attacks another country.
Before launching Operation Odyssey Dawn against Libya on March 19, 2011, Obama secured authorization from both the Arab League and the United Nations. But at no point did he ever push for a debate, or vote, in the United States Congress.
Now it is true that presidents have taken military action without specific authorization from Congress in the past. In 1986, for example, President Reagan also bombed Libya. And in 1998, President Clinton launched cruise missiles into Afghanistan and Sudan.
But those actions were both brief and limited responses to specific terrorist attacks on Americans. Reagan bombed Libya for a single day as punishment for their involvement in a bombing of American servicemen in Berlin. Clinton’s cruise missile attack was also limited to a single day and was in direct response to the bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Obama’s attack on Libya, however, lasted seven months, one week, and five days. Countless Libyan military personnel were killed during the campaign, as well as more than 60 civilians according to the United Nations Human Rights Council.
But unlike Reagan and Clinton, who were responding to specific attacks on Americans, Obama acted without any provocation. Libya had not recently attacked America, and was not threatening to, when Obama started bombing the country.
There simply is no constitutional justification for Obama’s unilateral bombing of Libya. Which is why top lawyers at both the Pentagon and the Justice Department told Obama he had no legal right to attack Libya as broadly as he was planning without authorization from Congress.
But instead of deciding the issue democratically, Obama overruled his lawyers and ordered the DOJ to write a new legal memo justifying his decision.
WHEN PRESIDENTS CAN ACT
Presidents have tested the boundary between the executive and legislative powers since the birth of the Constitution. Few tested it as boldly as the 33rd president, Harry Truman, who authorized his Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer to seize the nation’s steel mills at the height of the Korean War.
The day after Truman issued Executive Order 10340 effectively nationalizing the nation’s steel industry, lawyers for Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., along with lawyers from five other major steel companies, immediately filed suit.
Less than a month later, in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v Sawyer, a 6-3 majority ruled against Truman’s seizure, holding that he had no legal authority to seize the nation’s steel mills. Writing for the majority, Justice Hugo Black explained, “The President’s power, if any, to issue the order must stem either from an act of Congress or from the Constitution itself.”
Black went on to note that if Truman wanted to avoid a strike, the Taft-Hartley Act, which Truman had attempted to veto, specifically created a mechanism for him to do so. But Truman completely ignored that route.
Instead, Truman issued an order that Black said, “sets out reasons why the President believes certain policies should be adopted, proclaims these policies as rules of conduct to be followed, and again, like a statute, authorizes a government official to promulgate additional rules and regulations consistent with the policy proclaimed and needed to carry that policy into execution.” [emphasis added]
“In the framework of our Constitution,” Black continued, “the President’s power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a lawmaker. The Constitution limits his functions in the lawmaking process to the recommending of laws he thinks wise and the vetoing of laws he thinks bad. And the Constitution is neither silent nor equivocal about who shall make laws which the President is to execute.”
In other words, it does not matter how many executive orders a president issues. All that matters is that each executive action must have a basis in either the Constitution itself, or an act of Congress.
Unfortunately, far too often, Obama has chosen to completely ignore Congress, and instead act as lawmaker. The following are just a few of Obama’s most egregious constitutional transgressions.
Amazing, he has only been doing this for 6 years now!
His big trick wasn't just his new Unconstitutional Executive Orders but the expansion of existing orders into a completely unrecognizable new edicts.
I started pointing most of this out 6 years ago on my old forum but was derided ,insulted, and called a fool, lunatic, hate monger , racist and liar etc..
Just watch how much more of his completely anti-American socialism , radicalism and muslim appeasing deceptions he spits out in the next two long years!
The maggot is a traitor, just that simple... He came into office to destroy not to secure and lead this nation. Fact ... -Tyr