What Do You Think?

[jonnyb25]

What our government is doing effectively means that the US constitution is not just getting the nails driven into its coffin (as it has been for years) but the hole is now being filled in with dirt.

Welcome to the American dictatorship and the death of The land of the Free.

With even the home of the brave dwindling very quickly.



http://www.thedailybell.com/3204/Ron-Paul-Taking-Executive-Orders-Too-Far


Taking Executive Orders Too Far
Tuesday, November 08, 2011 – by Ron Paul



These are frustrating times for the President. Having been swept into office with a seemingly strong mandate, he enjoyed a Congress controlled by members of his own party for the first two years of his term. However, midterm elections brought gridlock and a close division of power between the two parties. With a crucial re-election campaign coming up, there is desperation in the president's desire to "do something" in spite of his severely weakened mandate.

Getting something done is proving to be a monumental task. This may be news to the supposed constitutional scholar who is now our president, but if the political process seems inconvenient to the implementation of his agenda, that is not a flaw in the system. It was designed that way. The drafters of the Constitution intended the default action of government to be inaction. Hopefully, this means actions taken by the government are necessary and proper. If federal laws or executive actions can't be agreed upon constitutionally- which is to say legally- such laws or actions should be rejected.

The vision of the founders was to set up a government that would remain small and unobtrusive via a system of checks and balances. That it has taken our government so long to get this big speaks well of the original design. The founders also knew the overwhelming nature of governments was to amass power and grow. The Constitution was to serve as the brakes on the freight train of government.

But the Obama administration, like so many administrations in the 20th century, chooses to ignore the Constitution entirely. The increasingly broad use and scope of the Executive Orders is a prime example. Executive Orders are meant to be a way for the president to direct executive agencies on the implementation of congressionally approved legislation. It has become increasingly common for them to be misused in ways that are contradictory to congressional intent, or to bypass Congress altogether in enacting political agendas. The current administration has unabashedly stated that Congress's unwillingness to pass the president's jobs bill means that the president will act unilaterally to enact provisions of it piecemeal through Executive Order. Obama explicitly threatens to bypass Congress, thus aggregating the power to make and enforce laws in the executive. This clearly erodes the principles of separation of powers and checks and balances. It brings the modern presidency dangerously close to an elective dictatorship.

Of course, the most dangerous and costly overstepping of executive authority is going to war without a congressional declaration. Congress has been sadly complicit in this usurpation by ceding much of its war-making authority to the executive because it wants to avoid taking responsibility for major war decisions, but that is part of our job in Congress! If the President cannot present to Congress and the people a convincingly strong case for going to war, then perhaps we should keep the nation at peace, rather than risk our men and women's lives for ill-defined reasons!

This administration certainly was not the first to behave in ways that have defied the Constitution to overstep its bounds. Sadly, previous administrations have set precedents that the current administration is only building upon. It is time for Congress to reassert itself and its constitutional role so that future administrations cannot continue on this dangerous path.

= = = = =


http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/oct/24/obamas-one-man-show/

MILLER: Obama’s one-man show
President unveils lawless scheme to bypass Congress with executive orders

By Emily Miller

-

The Washington Times

Monday, October 24, 2011

President Obama officially declared Congress irrelevant on Monday. Instead of following the proper legislative process, he’s going to rule by executive orders issued once per week for the rest of the year. “We don’t have to wait for Congress, we’re just going to go ahead and act on our own,” said Mr. Obama.

The president is upset that his Democratic Senate balked at his $467 billion American Jobs Act both as a whole and broken up into smaller tax-and-stimulus bills. So he’s going to bypass democracy and try to rule by fiat.

First up, he signed an executive directive expanding the power of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored twins responsible for kicking off the Great Recession. Later in the week, he will announce measures to change the terms of paying off student-loan debt.

“This president has the authority to take actions like this, and the ones he’s taken on No Child Left Behind, on payments to businesses doing work with the federal government,” explained White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.

Capitol Hill is ready to check the shift of control toward 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. House Speaker John A. Boehner’s spokesman Michael Steel said, “Rather than try to ignore the constitutional separation of powers by focusing only on executive orders, a better approach would be for the president to work with Republicans on solid, sustainable pro-growth policies that get our economy moving again and create jobs.”

Democrats ramming through big liberal programs was a major reason Republicans took back the House in 2010. “The Democrat-controlled Congress gave him nearly everything he wanted over the first two years of his administration, and we’re stuck with a health care bill Americans don’t want, 1.5 million fewer jobs and an economy that even the president says is in bad shape,” reminded Don Stewart, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “It’s no surprise that the American people wanted a Congress that wasn’t in such a giving mood with other people’s money.”

Mr. Obama has issued 95 executive orders so far, no more than other modern presidents, but scholars say he is taking it much further now.

“He’s doing something a whole sequence of presidents have done without legislative support,” said Dickinson College professor Andrew Rudalevige, author of “The New Imperial Presidency” (University of Michigan Press, 2005). “But it’s more blatant and partisan than usual with the organized roll out.”

Todd Gaziano, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, pointed out that releasing the orders one at a time raises questions. “If these are legal and would significantly help the economy, it raises a question about his competence for not issuing them all at once and doing it a year or two ago,” he said. “It leads me to believe that these executive orders are either much more questionable legally or much less effective than they purport to be.”

Mr. Obama’s new slogan is, “We can’t wait.” Unfortunately for him, the Constitution says he has to. If Mr. Obama wants to enact a far-left agenda, he’s going to have to convince the public to send him a majority in the House. Otherwise, this is a constitutional showdown Republicans in Congress need to win.

= = = = = = = = = =



http://specialguests.com/guests/viewnews.cgi?id=EFEEApFyZptTdPQzTn&style=Full%20Article


OBAMA, ATF CREATING GUN OWNER LIST: Using Executive Order to Bypass Congress


With the cover of the mainstream media’s unwillingness to shine a bright light on the Fast & Furious gun running scandal still unfolding in a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing, Barack Obama is brazenly trying to take another step towards unprecedented gun control.

According to Alan Gottlieb, Chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), Obama and the same Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives (ATF) tied up in the scandal are moving, via executive order, to bypass Congress in an attempt to create a gun owner registry—the first major tactic in any strategy to eventually disarm the public.

In his organization’s most recent broadcast alert to its members, Gottlieb warns:

“Without the approval of Congress, Obama is making gun shops in border states report gun purchasers to the federal government. Obama bypassed Congress and, instead, used the Justice Department to make this the law of the land.

Half a year after the tragic shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), Obama has released the first of many reforms he will make to our current gun laws. The rest of them will only get worse.

The anti-gun rules require gun dealers to report anyone who makes multiple semi-automatic weapon purchases within five days to the ATF. The gun buyer's personal information is then put into a massive government list where their gun activity will likely be tracked and monitored for the rest of their lives. 18,000 law-abiding Americans will be put on this list every year.”