Posted on 04/21/2016 9:20:34 AM PDT by Kaslin
In 2014, President Barack Obama signed 12 executive orders directing various agencies in the departments of State, Justice and Homeland Security to refrain from deporting some 4 million adult immigrants illegally present in the United States if they are the parents of children born here or legally present here and if they hold a job, obtain a high-school diploma or its equivalent, pay taxes and stay out of prison.
Unfortunately for the president, the conditions he established for avoiding deportation had been rejected by Congress.
In response to the executive orders, 26 states and the House of Representatives sued the president and the recipients of the orders, seeking to prevent them from being enforced. The states and the House argued that the president effectively rewrote the immigration laws and changed the standards for the deportation of unlawfully present adult immigrants.
The states also argued that because federal law requires them to offer the same safety net of social services for those illegally present as they do for those lawfully present, the financial burden that the enforcement of those orders would put upon them would be far beyond their budgetary limits. Moreover, they argued, enforcement of the president's orders would effectively constitute a presidential command to the states to spend their own tax dollars against their wishes, and the president lacks the power to do that.
In reply, the president argued that the literal enforcement of the law creates an impossible conundrum for him. He does not want to deport the parents of American children, as that destroys families and impairs the welfare of children; and he cannot deport children who were born here, as they are American citizens. Hence his novel resolution.
The case was filed in Texas, where a federal district court judge agreed with the states and signed an order that prohibited the feds from enforcing the president's orders, pending a full trial. The feds appealed.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans upheld the injunction against the president. In so doing, it agreed with the states that the financial burden on them that would come from the enforcement of these executive orders would be unconstitutional. It also agreed with the House of Representatives that the president exceeded his authority under the Constitution and effectively rewrote the laws.
This week, the Supreme Court heard the feds' appeal. Because the seat formerly occupied by the late Justice Antonin Scalia for 30 years is still vacant, the court has just eight justices -- for the most part, four conservatives and four liberals. A tie vote in the court, which appears likely in this case, will not set any precedent, but it will retain the injunction against the president. The most recent time this happened was 1952, when the court enjoined President Harry Truman from seizing steel mills during the Korean conflict.
Though the issue here is immigration, the constitutional values underlying the case are more far-reaching. Since the era of Woodrow Wilson -- accelerated under Franklin D. Roosevelt, enhanced under Lyndon B. Johnson and brought over the top under George W. Bush -- Congress has ceded some of its powers to the president. It has enabled him to borrow unlimited amounts of money and to spend as he sees fit. It has looked the other way when presidents have started wars, arrested Americans without charge or trial and even killed Americans.
Can Congress voluntarily give some of its powers to the president, either by legislation or by impotent acquiescence when the president takes them?
In a word, no.
The purpose of the division of powers -- Congress writes the laws, the president enforces the laws and the courts interpret them and decide what they mean -- is to preserve personal liberty by preventing the accumulation of too much power in one branch of government.
The 26 states and the House told the Supreme Court this week that the president is enforcing the laws not as Congress wrote them but as he wishes them to have been written, because he actually directed officials of the executive branch to enforce the versions of the laws that he rewrote instead of the laws on the books.
That arguably violates his oath of office, in which he agreed that he would "faithfully" enforce all federal laws. We know from his notes that James Madison, when he drafted the presidential oath, insisted that the word "faithfully" be inserted so as to impress upon presidents their obligation to enforce laws even if they disagree with them.
During oral argument in the court this week, there was a bizarre exchange over terminology that the president used in his orders. In a weird series of questions, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. asked whether the president's executive orders could be salvaged constitutionally by excising or changing a few words. This was improper because it treated an executive order as if it were a statute. It is not the job of the court to find ways to salvage executive orders as it is to salvage statutes, because the Constitution has given "all legislative Powers" to Congress and none to the president.
Statutes are presumed to be constitutional. Executive orders that contradict statutes are presumed to be unconstitutional, and the court has no business trying to save them.
All presidents from time to time have exercised discretion upon individuals when it comes to enforcing laws that pose hardships. But none has done so for 4 million people, and none has written substitute laws of his own making. Until now.
It doesn’t matter what the court thinks its doing. Illegal Aliens are going out like they came in and they can comeback legally, if they qualify. That will be done by executive order if necessary which is what this was-— So if it is upheld , Trump does his own executive order. Pretty simple stuff.
“During oral argument in the court this week, there was a bizarre exchange over terminology that the president used in his orders. In a weird series of questions, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. asked whether the president’s executive orders could be salvaged constitutionally by excising or changing a few words. This was improper because it treated an executive order as if it were a statute. It is not the job of the court to find ways to salvage executive orders as it is to salvage statutes, because the Constitution has given “all legislative Powers” to Congress and none to the president.”
We need to impeach and remove John Roberts from the SCOTUS!
What part of “illegal alien” don’t these people understand?
The US is a sovereign nation, and we owe mexico and the rest of central/south america approximately JACK/SHIT!
If it wasn’t for Polk, mexico would have been several more US states that we would have won from the spaniards.
If mexico and south america has a problem with tthis, we can always side with spain in their claim for ALL of central/south america, and let them take over. Think second coming of Cortez.
If we had an opposition party they would have been in court stopping his first illegal amnesty for illegal aliens in 2012 when he announced DACA.
As it is the states had to step usp to sue to stop his SECOND illegal amnesty for illegal aliens.
Presidents cannot change laws.
Kenyanesian Usurpers apparently can, though.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers…
States rights? CONgre$$? Who’da thunk it?
The most important question that was ever proposed to your decision, or to the decision of any people under heaven, is before you, and you are to decide upon it by men of your own election, chosen specially for this purpose. If the constitution, offered to your acceptance, be a wise one, calculated to preserve the invaluable blessings of liberty, to secure the inestimable rights of mankind, and promote human happiness, then, if you accept it, you will lay a lasting foundation of happiness for millions yet unborn; generations to come will rise up and call you blessed. You may rejoice in the prospects of this vast extended continent becoming filled with freemen, who will assert the dignity of human nature. You may solace yourselves with the idea, that society, in this favoured land, will fast advance to the highest point of perfection; the human mind will expand in knowledge and virtue, and the golden age be, in some measure, realised. But if, on the other hand, this form of government contains principles that will lead to the subversion of liberty — if it tends to establish a despotism, or, what is worse, a tyrannic aristocracy; then, if you adopt it, this only remaining assylum for liberty will be shut up, and posterity will execrate your memory.
Momentous then is the question you have to determine, and you are called upon by every motive which should influence a noble and virtuous mind, to examine it well, and to make up a wise judgment. It is insisted, indeed, that this constitution must be received, be it ever so imperfect. If it has its defects, it is said, they can be best amended when they are experienced. But remember, when the people once part with power, they can seldom or never resume it again but by force. Many instances can be produced in which the people have voluntarily increased the powers of their rulers; but few, if any, in which rulers have willingly abridged their authority. This is a sufficient reason to induce you to be careful, in the first instance, how you deposit the powers of government.
So far therefore as its powers reach, all ideas of confederation are given up and lost. It is true this government is limited to certain objects, or to speak more properly, some small degree of power is still left to the states, but a little attention to the powers vested in the general government, will convince every candid man, that if it is capable of being executed, all that is reserved for the individual states must very soon be annihilated, except so far as they are barely necessary to the organization of the general government. The powers of the general legislature extend to every case that is of the least importance — there is nothing valuable to human nature, nothing dear to freemen, but what is within its power. It has authority to make laws which will affect the lives, the liberty, and property of every man in the United States; nor can the constitution or laws of any state, in any way prevent or impede the full and complete execution of every power given. The legislative power is competent to lay taxes, duties, imposts, and excises; — there is no limitation to this power…
And are by this clause invested with the power of making all laws, proper and necessary, for carrying all these into execution; and they may so exercise this power as entirely to annihilate all the state governments, and reduce this country to one single government. And if they may do it, it is pretty certain they will; for it will be found that the power retained by individual states, small as it is, will be a clog upon the wheels of the government of the United States; the latter therefore will be naturally inclined to remove it out of the way. Besides, it is a truth confirmed by the unerring experience of ages, that every man, and every body of men, invested with power, are ever disposed to increase it, and to acquire a superiority over every thing that stands in their way. This disposition, which is implanted in human nature, will operate in the federal legislature to lessen and ultimately to subvert the state authority, and having such advantages, will most certainly succeed, if the federal government succeeds at all.
In a free republic…
Brutus #1 - Anti-federalist
Separation of powers between the 3 branches or 3 stooges running kabuki theater on the citizens of the republic?
Step by step, inch by inch…(one day those rats came and destroyed everything)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYP1OBZfFK0
Sounds like the Dread Pirate Roberts is warming up for more pretzel logic to save the Kenyanesian Usurper again.
Absolutely.
He has a history of egregiously impeachable behavior.
“Can Congress voluntarily give some of its powers to the president, either by legislation or by impotent acquiescence when the president takes them?
In a word, no. “
As the director says in Hollywood....
Cut! Take! Print! Lunch !
” That will be done by executive order if necessary which is what this was-— So if it is upheld , Trump does his own executive order. Pretty simple stuff.”
What I posted yesterday. On this and a whole slew of other executive “actions”
Goose meet gander!
>>Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. asked whether the president’s executive orders could be salvaged constitutionally by excising or changing a few words.<<
The fix is in. Little Johnny Roberts is going to interpret the executive order as constitutional, just as he did with DeathCare. A tax is not a tax and a state exchange means a federal exchange.
And this is the finest legal mind in the country? I’d say close all he law schools, we’ve got idiots in plentiful supply. And I’d sue Roberts in criminal court for his adoptions.
Let John Obamacare Roberts write the executive orders. He’s a fixer.
TREASON - continuous, in-your-face, agenda-driven; agency-abetted, representative-enabled, judicially-accepted, media-complicit, ongoing...
POSOTUS, kangaroo Court, CONgreSS and the invasion.
And who was it that pushed Roberts out front and center to get appointed in the first place.....
Was that the Cuban / Canadian guy from Texas....?
I think so.
Yes,I think so. I am very offended by putting third rate nobodies on my currency driven by political crap rather than great Americans. I want that stopped and returned to our heritage . I do think a $3 bill could have Bruce Jenner.
Or Hillary
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