Thursday, January 30, 2014

Ted Cruz: The Imperial Presidency of Barack Obama


In the nation's history, there is simply no precedent for an American president so wantonly ignoring federal law.

by Ted Cruz

Jan. 28, 2014 6:57 p.m. ET

Of all the troubling aspects of the Obama presidency, none is more dangerous than the president's persistent pattern of lawlessness, his willingness to disregard the written law and instead enforce his own policies via executive fiat. On Monday, Mr. Obama acted unilaterally to raise the minimum wage paid by federal contracts, the first of many executive actions the White House promised would be a theme of his State of the Union address Tuesday night.
The president's taste for unilateral action to circumvent Congress should concern every citizen, regardless of party or ideology. The great 18th-century political philosopher Montesquieu observed: "There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates." America's Founding Fathers took this warning to heart, and we should too.
Rule of law doesn't simply mean that society has laws; dictatorships are often characterized by an abundance of laws. Rather, rule of law means that we are a nation ruled by laws, not men. That no one—and especially not the president—is above the law. For that reason, the U.S. Constitution imposes on every president the express duty to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed."
Yet rather than honor this duty, President Obama has openly defied it by repeatedly suspending, delaying and waiving portions of the laws he is charged to enforce. When Mr. Obama disagreed with federal immigration laws, he instructed the Justice Department to cease enforcing the laws. He did the same thing with federal welfare law, drug laws and the federal Defense of Marriage Act.
On many of those policy issues, reasonable minds can disagree. Mr. Obama may be right that some of those laws should be changed. But the typical way to voice that policy disagreement, for the preceding 43 presidents, has been to work with Congress to change the law. If the president cannot persuade Congress, then the next step is to take the case to the American people. As President Reagan put it: "If you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat" of electoral accountability.
President Obama has a different approach. As he said recently, describing his executive powers: "I've got a pen, and I've got a phone." Under the Constitution, that is not the way federal law is supposed to work.
The Obama administration has been so brazen in its attempts to expand federal power that the Supreme Court has unanimously rejected the Justice Department's efforts to expand federal power nine times since January 2012.
There is no example of lawlessness more egregious than the enforcement—or nonenforcement—of the president's signature policy, the Affordable Care Act. Mr. Obama has repeatedly declared that "it's the law of the land." Yet he has repeatedly violated ObamaCare's statutory text.
The law says that businesses with 50 or more full-time employees will face the employer mandate on Jan. 1, 2014. President Obama changed that, granting a one-year waiver to employers. How did he do so? Not by going to Congress to change the text of the law, but through a blog post by an assistant secretary at Treasury announcing the change.
The law says that only Americans who have access to state-run exchanges will be subject to employer penalties and may obtain ObamaCare premium subsidies. This was done to entice the states to create exchanges. But, when 34 states decided not to establish state-run exchanges, the Obama administration announced that the statutory words "established by State" would also mean "established by the federal government."
The law says that members of Congress and their staffs' health coverage must be an ObamaCare exchange plan, which would prevent them from receiving their current federal-employee health subsidies, just like millions of Americans who can't receive such benefits. At the behest of Senate Democrats, the Obama administration instead granted a special exemption (deeming "individual" plans to be "group" plans) to members of Congress and their staffs so they could keep their pre-existing health subsidies.
Most strikingly, when over five million Americans found their health insurance plans canceled because ObamaCare made their plans illegal—despite the president's promise "if you like your plan, you can keep it"—President Obama simply held a news conference where he told private insurance companies to disobey the law and issue plans that ObamaCare regulated out of existence.
In other words, rather than go to Congress and try to provide relief to the millions who are hurting because of the "train wreck" of ObamaCare (as one Senate Democrat put it), the president instructed private companies to violate the law and said he would in effect give them a get-out-of-jail-free card—for one year, and one year only. Moreover, in a move reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's looking-glass world, President Obama simultaneously issued a veto threat if Congress passed legislation doing what he, himself, was then ordering.
In the more than two centuries of our nation's history, there is simply no precedent for the White House wantonly ignoring federal law and asking private companies to do the same. As my colleague Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa asked, "This was the law. How can they change the law?"
Similarly, 11 state attorneys general recently wrote a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius saying that the continuing changes to ObamaCare are "flatly illegal under federal constitutional and statutory law." The attorneys general correctly observed that "the only way to fix this problem-ridden law is to enact changes lawfully: through Congressional action."
In the past, when Republican presidents abused their power, many Republicans—and the press—rightly called them to account. Today many in Congress—and the press—have chosen to give President Obama a pass on his pattern of lawlessness, perhaps letting partisan loyalty to the man supersede their fidelity to the law.
But this should not be a partisan issue. In time, the country will have another president from another party. For all those who are silent now: What would they think of a Republican president who announced that he was going to ignore the law, or unilaterally change the law? Imagine a future president setting aside environmental laws, or tax laws, or labor laws, or tort laws with which he or she disagreed.
That would be wrong—and it is the Obama precedent that is opening the door for future lawlessness. As Montesquieu knew, an imperial presidency threatens the liberty of every citizen. Because when a president can pick and choose which laws to follow and which to ignore, he is no longer a president.
[Mr. Cruz, a Republican senator from Texas, serves as the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Rights]


39 comments:

  1. Dolores Heinlein-PaineJanuary 30, 2014 at 12:21 PM

    The imperial presidency goes back a long way. Some say it started with Lincoln, but Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson perfected it, and FDR was its early apotheosis, all enabled by good progressive Justices like Oliver Wendell Holmes.

    The hysterical cry of "DO SOMETHING!" has touched off more bureaucratic mischief and downright government villainy than any other single cause.

    It still amazed me how those who scream in fear and collapse in paroxysms of rage at the depredations of corporations and big business pull down their pants and willingly take it in the hind quarters from Big Government, all the while mouthing apologies that would make the most cowed battered spouse blush.

    Fools, all.

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  2. "In the nation's history, there is simply no precedent for an American president so wantonly ignoring federal law." [In reference to presidential executive orders]

    If Cruz actually said that, then he's a history moron.

    The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order.

    FDR issued well over 3,000 E.O.s.

    Ronald Wilson Reagan issued 381 Executive orders in 8 years.

    In 5 years, Mr. Obama has issued 167.

    So, yes. Cruz is a history moron.

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  3. Thank God for TED Cruz and Mike Lee and all the rest of the Republicans that are still fighting. They are our only Defense Against O'Bummer Care, We All Need To Stand With Them against those Power hungry Whack-job's that Think they have the power to run our lives, (we need them to take care of us) is - BULL-CRAP. We pay the bills, We Should be able to Choose Our Own Health Care,( No - Body) should sign- up for this Insane Bill They call Health Care. We should All Stand -Up and tell the Head Nit -Wit he can Shove -It where the sun don't shine. Him and his Family can have it and the rest of the Demo-rats and their families. But Wait!!!! They Don't Want it, Either, But stick it to us, so we can pay for other people that aren't working or are illegal's. And we're suppose to accept it. This is Our Country NOT O"BUMMER"S And the rest of his bleeding heart Liberal's. I Love You Ted Cruz and all the rest of your Congressmen friends That Believe what you and the rest of us Believe, We Love Our Country we Need to Clean it up. We need to take care of our own people, Stop giving our hard earned Money away to people that hate us, And get America back on track. 2016 Mr Cruz You Got My Vote

    Ted Cruz, or Mike Lee,or Ben Carson, Are all Great Americans. They All Would have done Better Job with they're Eyes Closed. Than the BUM We Got Stuck with Twice.

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  4. Depend on a dyed in the wool leftist to try to defeat the main point of an argument by harping on a technicality -- or even a cluster of technicalities -- that does nothing either to defeat or enhance the reason why the article appeared in as prestigious a publication as The Wall Street Journal.

    Yes, there have been numerous precedents where presidents abused their powers -- all of them with woefully regretful results


    Lincoln simply USURPED dictatorial power denied him by the Constitution, and was, therefore, directly, personally responsible for the gruesome DEATHS of 635,000.00 men, plus countless millions maimed, blinded, made chronically ill, driven insane, rendered homeless, widowed, orphaned and hideously impoverished for numerous generations yet to come.

    TR also acted unilaterally. We were taught to love him for his role as a Trust Buster, and the far-seeing single-handed creator of our National Park Systems, while convenient forgetting the bullying immorality and dreadful after-effects of the Spanish-American War.

    Woodrow Wilson, The Father of the Internationalist Movement, who forced us nto World War One under patently false pretenses, was a dreadful mass murderer whose legacy bears a stench that lingers to this very day.

    The de facto Socialist FDR, another self-anointed dictator, left us maimed almost beyond recognition. Despite appearances to the contrary, we have never recovered from his much vaunted incursions into domestic policy that put us firmly on the Road to Serfdom.

    So yes, INDEED, there have been historic precedents for Mr. Obama's threat of ever greater unilateral action on his part, but bad precedents -- however far back they may go in history -- never made for good public policy -- EVEN WHEN the "results" SEEMED to be favorable from a certain narrow set of perspectives.

    Emulating and compounding the grievous errors of the Past, gives no hope at all for a better future.

    No matter how loudly leftists, shout, scream, bellow, bray, roar, swear oaths, or how vigorously they stamp their cloven hooves, belch flames through their nostrils, blow smoke through their ears, and twitch their horns while adamantly asserting their lies, half-truth and stale, evil-smelling clichés, they cannot win but a series of temporary victories over Truth, which WILL defeat them in the long run, though it take millennia.

    If senator Cruz qualifies in any way as a "moron," perhaps we should lay the blame on Harvard University, that prestigious, Ivy League hotbed of leftist sedition where he received his education in the law.

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  5. Universities give students the environment, the tools, and the opportunity to learn.

    If the attending students don't have the ability or the intellect to do so, that's THEIR fault, not the university's.

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  6. Please don't be silly. It's very difficult to get IN to a prestigious university, but quite IMPOSSIBLE to GRADUATE from one without measuring up to whatever standards prevail at the time.

    UNLESS, of course, you are Teddy Kennedy, John Kerry, George W. Bush or Barry Soetero aka Barack Obama none of whim could possibly have "made the grade" without considerable backing either from abundant family wealth, or powerful, agenda-driven outside influences with whom the university was in sympathy.

    And AGAIN, you deliberately evade the POINT more-than-adequately outlined in my last statement, which all are welcome to read again.

    Your typically leftist method of attempting to defeat a worthy opponent by attacking him personally in the hoe of discrediting him in the public's eye is a low trick -- unworthy to the point of being downright ignoble.

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  7. Good post FreeT 'er. That's more like it

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  8. However dangerous Ted Cruz is to democrats now, and make no mistake about it HE IS!, he should be much more dangerous to the democrats in the future.

    The democrats are done anyway. They are finished. By the time Syria blows up in their faces, and by the time Obamacare get going full blast in the businessman’s faces, democrats won't be able to win an election for class president. And Hillary won’t be able to get elected as the towns Dog Catcher.

    I would like to see him run with Alan West as his running mate.

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  9. "I would like to see him run with Alan West as his running mate."

    Cruz was born in Canada. No POTUS for him.

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  10. FT,
    No matter how loudly leftists, shout, scream, bellow, bray, roar, swear oaths, or how vigorously they stamp their cloven hooves, belch flames through their nostrils, blow smoke through their ears, and twitch their horns while adamantly asserting their lies, half-truth and stale, evil-smelling clichés, they cannot win but a series of temporary victories over Truth, which WILL defeat them in the long run, though it take millennia.

    Great comment! [T]hey stamp their cloven hooves! Yes, indeed.

    Mr. AOW, to whom I read your comment, says: "What a brilliant piece of writing!"

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  11. Free, lets accept, for a moment, you argument, that any president issuing an EO is committing an offense against the constitution.

    The problem with people like Sen Cruz and all the other conservative commenter who disagree with this action is that they supposedly only got their constitutional backbone after Barack Obama was elected.

    Is this new found disgust and worry about an action that dates to Pres Jefferson only egregious now because they disagree with the person wielding the pen?

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  12. SIlent Cal said


    Famed Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz ranks Sen. Ted Cruz among the school’s smartest students, adding that the Canada-born Texan can run for president in 2016.

    Cruz was a “terrific student,” Dershowitz told The Daily Caller. “He was always very active in class, presenting a libertarian point of view. He didn’t strike me as a social conservative, more of a libertarian.”

    “He had brilliant insights and he was clearly among the top students, as revealed by his class responses,” Dershowitz added.

    Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/09/dershowitz-tex-cruz-one-of-harvard-laws-smartest-students/#ixzz2rzDOD300

    ReplyDelete
  13. ..
    Silent Cal said

    Dave Miller, you need to read FreeThinke's comment made 1/30/14 at 1:08 pm.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Anon... apparently you misread my point.

    I said, let's accept Free's point.

    My contention is that a criticism of the practice of EO's, which has been going on since at least President Jefferson, yet only began with the election of Barack Obama, must be viewed as suspect.

    I may totally agree with the premise of limiting, or even eliminating EO's, but that was not the point of what I am asking.

    I want to know from a conservative, Free, or anyone else for that matter, why this criticism has only begun since President Obama was elected.

    Is that not a valid question?

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  15. Where were all the objections when Clinton declared "Don't ask, don't tell?"

    How about when the Attorney General decided not to enforce DOMA?

    Please.

    The Presidential "War Powers" are all about suspending the Constitution. It's a recognized deficiency of all Legal authority, since Plato first spoke of his Nocturnal Council" in his "Laws" (380 bc)

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  16. Hi, Dave,

    First of all it wasn't my contention that all executive orders are unconstitutional. I'm not even sure that Senator Cruz, himself, quite believes that.

    Also, this is certainly not the first time that anyone in either party complained about the use of this, I think dubious, power.

    I haven't done what all interested citizens should do; that is study the history of executive orders in detail. Which presidents made them, how many and -- especially -- for what purpose?

    Earlier, as Silent Cal indicated, I outlined what-I-consider-to-have-been flagrant ABUSES of presidential power starting with Abraham Lincoln, whom I regard -- against popular opinion -- as one of history's Great Villains. The facts in what I outlined earlier are not contestable -- only the way we choose to INTERPRET them is properly open to discussion.

    If you believe that the objections raised by such as Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Tom Lee, Senator Cruz and most conservative-libertarian commentators and social critics is something brand new and tailored primarily to hurt President Obama, I'd be delighted to sell you the Taj Mahal for considerably less than current market value.

    Vigorous protest, incessant, often militant opposition, and vehement debate are vitally important elements in what made the United States the country it once was.

    I've lived almost 73 years, and from what I've observed and absorbed it seems -- in addition to the abuses of Lincoln, TR, Wilson and FDR -- the democratic process has been increasingly corrupted, circumvented, even obviated and replaced first by EDICTS handed down by an an increasingly imperious, authoritarian Supreme Court, more recently by Presidential Fiat.

    While former presidents certainly did use executive orders, it is my impression that use of the tactic has increased exponentially in -- let us say -- the past forty years -- and the purposes for which it has been used in latter years have been increasingly Draconian.

    There is a tendency in virtually all mankind to become despotic given the chance. Just about everyone secretly longs to be a dictator. We see this at all levels from the Nuclear Family, Churches, PTA, Homeowner's Associations, town, county, state government right on up to the Federal Government.

    The Founding Fathers were well aware of this, which is why they designed a tripartite system of governance with a system of checks and balances intended to keep any one of the coequal branches from getting too big for its breeches.

    The corrupting influence of Big Money, which today means largely the Wall Street behemoth Goldman Sachs working in cahoots with many-if-not-quite-all members of Congress has created a maverick system called Crony Capitalism or Corporatism which in no way even pretends to represent the best interests of our people.

    This Power Bloc, which I call The Oligarchs, because that us exactly how they function, has effectively usurped the prerogatives of the citizenry.

    Barack Hussein Obama is very much a tool of that Power Bloc -- a group of perversely ambitious, fiendishly clever high rollers with a bullying, contemptuous disposition whose hubris knows no bounds.

    The Oligarchs must have been great students of The Prince, because they know very well how to DIVIDE and CONQUER. They in supporting ALL factions and ideologies, and thus NO faction or ideology have managed to get us all at each other's throats.

    We know positively that we have powerful enemies, but because we are constantly misled by a depraved, frankly evil Establishment, we misidentify the foe, and waste most of our time, energy and money battling a series of man made CHIMERAS.

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  17. Want some extra reading? See the Executive Orders Disposition Tables Index at the National Archives site.

    Wikipedia offers this information, but it's not as comprehensive as the information at the National Archives web site.

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  18. Looks to me as if FDR was the leader of the pack. And -- no surprise -- with FDR came the burgeoning federal bureaucracy.

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  19. Dave is all wet, but then again he's a lefty

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  20. HERE THEY ARE - THAKS to AOW

    Total Number of Executive Orders
    of the American Presidents


    George Washington - 8
    John Adams - 1
    unnumbered
    Thomas Jefferson - 4
    James Madison - 1
    James Monroe - 1
    John Quincy Adams - 3
    Andrew Jackson - 12
    Martin van Buren - 10
    William Henry Harrison - 0
    John Tyler - 17
    James K. Polk - 18
    Zachary Taylor - 5
    Millard Fillmore - 12
    Franklin Pierce - 35
    James Buchanan - 16
    Abraham Lincoln - 48
    Andrew Johnson - 79
    Ulysses S. Grant - 217
    Rutherford B. Hayes - 92
    James Garfield - 6
    Chester Arthur - 96
    Grover Cleveland - 113
    Benjamin Harrison - 143
    Grover Cleveland - 140
    William McKinley - 185
    Theodore Roosevelt - 1,081
    William Howard Taft - 724
    Woodrow Wilson - 1,803
    Warren G. Harding - 522
    Calvin Coolidge - 1,203
    Herbert Hoover - 968
    Franklin D. Roosevelt - 3,522
    Harry S. Truman - 907
    Dwight D. Eisenhower - 484
    John F. Kennedy - 214
    Lyndon B. Johnson - 325
    Richard Nixon - 346
    Gerald R. Ford - 169
    Jimmy Carter - 320
    Ronald Reagan - 381
    George Bush - 166
    William J. Clinton - 364
    George W. Bush - 291
    Barack Obama - 168

    Now that we have the umbers, we need to consider what, if anything, they prove about the leadership quauty of these inividuals?

    I hae to admit I was very surprised at the number reported on Cal Coolidge.

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  21. "Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges." - Tacitus, "Annals"

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  22. In psychological terms:

    Law = Ego-Ideal
    Presidential Power = Super Ego

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  23. As we can all see, a President "constitutionally" incorporates both aspects... Ego-Ideal AND SuperEgo

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  24. What we see is that President Obama is far below every other President who served more than 4 years.

    Again, what I would ask is where were you guys when GW Bush was doing the same? There were few, if any complaints form conservatives other than Ron Paul as this was going on.

    I recall few conservatives blogging then calling him a dictator. Again, why was that? Even Ron Paul, while disagreeing with GW's actions, never intimated he was being imperialistic or becoming a dictator.

    i just find it interesting...

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    Replies
    1. Bush. Bush, Bush.
      Is that all you can say?

      Delete
  25. I submit that it is the content of executive orders that matters -- not the number of executive orders.

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  26. Dave,
    FYI...I was never enamored of nor a defender of GWB.

    I will say, however, that an attack such as 9/11 would and should lead to a plethora of executive orders. An emergency such as 9/11 warrants executive orders and MAY constitutional; please see this about some of the dispute related to executive orders.

    Also, this sentence at Wikipedia is quite interesting:

    In other countries, similar edicts may be known as decrees, orders in council, or fiat.

    Would not most Americans deem the first and the third of those terms as un-American?

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  27. It is my belief that the founders understood that the law would at times be an impediment to "good" government, and so forced the executive to "document" his excursions, for the record.... and that these "excursions" are represented by "Executive Orders".

    The orders would then be reviewed by the Senate and SCOTUS during the President's "Impeachment" trial, and would form a chain of evidence.

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  28. From the WIKI article in Executive Orders:

    ... executive orders are subject to judicial review, and may be struck down if deemed by the courts to be unsupported by statute or the Constitution. Major policy initiatives usually require approval by the legislative branch ...

    lthough there is no constitutional provision nor statute that explicitly permits executive orders, there is a vague grant of "executive power" given in Article II, Section 1, Clause 1 of the Constitution, and furthered by the declaration "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" made in Article II, Section 3, Clause 5.

    Most executive orders use these Constitutional reasonings as the authorization

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  29. Also:


    Presidential directives are considered a form of executive order issued by the President of the United States with the advice and consent of a major agency or department found within the Executive branch of government.

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  30. Dave,

    I think your curiosity has been piqued, because your sympathies lean heavily toward the left as do those of our current president.

    As I said earlier, each of us have a not-so-secret longing to be a dictator. Do you know anyone at all who would NOT like to have his own way?

    I, Alas! do not.

    As a leftist you -- and others of your persuasion -- are quite naturally irritated at any show of opposition to "your" man.

    By the same token conservatives tend to feel equally annoyed -- even outraged -- when opposition balks their fondest hopes and dreams.

    AOW in her usually succinct, no-nonsense fashioned summed up the argument:

    "... it is the content of executive orders that matters -- not the number ..."

    SO, why would those of us who frankly despise -- not the MAN, but his POLICIES -- NOT take umbrage and do whatever we can to balk the machinations of an administration that WE believe has done much to speed us along the Road to Ruin?

    In short human beings will use whatever they have and do whatever they can to try to get their OWN way.

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  31. ALSO:

    Admittedly The Founders were as fractious, contentious and quarrelsome a group as ever lived. What sets them apart, however, is their mutual recognition that we MUST be governed by strict adherence to fundamental PRINCIPLES if we wish to avoid lapsing into one of two highly undesirable conditions:

    A) DICTATORSHIP ( i.e. quasi-monarchic government by the whims of an individual)

    B) ANARCHY (the inevitable savagery and brutality of mob rule).


    Barack Hussein Obama and his lackeys and handmaidens in The Cabinet, Congress, and our avowedly left-leaning media are governing with truculent determination AGAINST the Will of the People.

    FDR, who also seized the advantage of coming to power in desperate times, did the same. As did America's First Dictator, Abraham Lincoln.

    The basic difference between Left and Right is the latter's passionate devotion to LIBERTY and former's fervent belief in EXPEDIENCY coupled with the ever present threat of potentially lethal FORCE to achieve desirable goals.

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  32. I believe that the overuse and abuse of Executive Orders violates the intent of the Founding Fathers in their declared founding ideals of the country. If the rights of the citizens are sacrosanct and held above the power of the state to impose upon them, then it should be obvious that Executive Orders are the means of removing the protective barriers that the founder of the country explicitly stated as being the unique feature of the country—the limited power of the state to encroach upon the rights of the individual.

    Looking at the long list of Presidents that imposed all the executive orders, it is also obvious that both parties share in this odious practice. The one thing that should be concluded from all this fiat government has moved the country so far from the original ideals of the Founding Fathers, and it's something that they explicitly warned against, that future generation of citizens be vigilant in this type of blatant dictatorial power being used.

    Hopefully the day will arise (and STAT) that the fraudulent operations of both political parties will be seen for the exact stealth power grab that it is. The end game: Globalism. And Globalism being a centralized power structure of the initiated elect to impose the most ruthless tyranny ever imposed upon the gullible and stupid "goyim" of the planet Earth.

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  33. Hello, Waylon, I largely agree with your assessment, but found it disturbingly interesting that Calvin Coolidge, probably the MOST conservative president since the turn of the 20th century, issued more than 1,200 of these things.

    ALL processes involving political power are prone to potential abuse.

    One thing is clear:

    With the exception of Ulysses S. Grant, who made over two-hundred of these things, the increased use of Executive Orders -- tantamount to Edicts, Royal Proclamations, Dictatorial Fiat, etc. -- began to increase in earnest with the advent of "Progressivism."

    How quickly the Democrats forget the hideous denunciations they heaped on Richard Nixon, a true "Man of the People," ironically, one of the most "liberal" Republicans ever to hold office in the modern era. If I live to be a thousand, I will NEVER cease believing that the Democrats were so fearfully enraged the LANDSLIDE victory that ushered in Mr. Nixon's second term, they just HAD to 'get him" by hook or by crook. The Journalistic coup d'etat that ensued was one of the most vicious, unprincipled events in our short history --unless you count the depredations of Andrew Jackson -- our first "common" president -- and Abe Lincoln, who single-handedly changed the very identity of this nation.

    We have never recovered from the Civil War. It changed us forever from a democratic, representative republic to a nation prone to subjecting itself increasingly to authoritarian regimes.

    And that does NOT mean, O Ye Tossers of Shells from the Peanut Gallery, that I long for a return to slavery. That spurious point of view has become enshrined in the realm of myth and legend conjured up by leftist historians.



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  34. AOW in her usually succinct, no-nonsense fashioned summed up the argument

    When I first started blogging, a fellow blogger dubbed me "Blunt AOW." True enough. My mother used to warn me that my bluntness would bet me into trouble. It has, but I still tend to terseness much of the time.

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  35. Well, dearAOW, surely you must know I meant it as a compliment.

    If anything, I was indulging in a bit of self-deprecation, since I'm well aware I can never seem to say anything without lapsing into "essay mode." ;-)

    Of course I'd love to talk about points raised and issues that concern us more than I would talking about ourselves, BUT that is an increasingly rare privilege. Even my very oldest and dearest friends (some now in their NINETIES, but still very active) want much more to "make speeches" than to exchange ideas.

    I suppose i do the same. As you know, I've been accused (wrongly, I believe) of having a "superiority complex" although that specific term has never been used. Many seem to resent my old-fashioned style, and mistake it for pretentiousness.

    Sorry, but as someone once said in a play I've ling forgotten, "I am what I am, and I don't give a damn."

    One of the few good things about growing old is the lessening of concern over what others may think of our precious little selves.

    Another dear old friend, who died twenty years ago at the age of 94 -- and never lost so much as a single marble -- often said, "I'd much rather be alone than in poor company."

    It wasn't "sour grapes." I know she meant it. I soon came to adopt it as a personal motto.

    She also said, "I like people well enough, but thank Heaven i don't particularly NEED them."

    Smart old gal! ;-O

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  36. FT,
    Oh, I did take what you said as a compliment for me.

    I am one of those "what you see is what you get" kind of people.

    I'm sure that I'd have liked your dear old friend, who died twenty years ago at the age of 94 very much.

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  37. Shall I call you WYSIWIG then? ;-)

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  38. It's eerie, really eerie. Ted Cruz reminds me so much of Joe McCarthy.

    Perhaps that explains the Republican Tea Party Wing's strong support of the guy.

    As to executive orders, it would do well to check the record, you might be very surprised as few presidents have used EO's as sparingly as Obama.

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