Free Republic

A year before his first inauguration, Barack Obama laid out the objective of his presidency: to renew faith and trust in -activist government and transform the country. In an hourlong interview with the editorial board of the Reno Gazette-Journal on January 16, 2008, Obama said that his campaign was already “shifting the political paradigm” and promised that his presidency would do the same. His model would be Ronald Reagan, who “put us on a fundamentally different path,” in a way that distinguished him from leaders who were content merely to occupy the office. “I think that Ronald Reagan changed the...

President Barack Obama is pledging new U.S. help for other nations struggling to address global warming, as heads of state from around the world converge for a major summit on climate change. Obama will use his speech at a U.N. summit Tuesday to announce plans to sign an executive order requiring the U.S. government to take climate change into account when it spends money overseas to help poorer countries, the White House said. The U.S. will also offer vulnerable communities abroad new tools to address the effects of climate change through science and technology. The measures join a host of...

On Monday, Vice President Joe Biden promised that President Barack Obama would "do an awful lot" for illegal immigrants with executive actions toward amnesty. He said if Republicans don't "see the lord" on immigration after the midterm elections, then they will feel some "lightning." According to pool reports, Biden spoke at a Hispanic Heritage Month reception at his residence and reportedly called up a student who had received temporary amnesty due to Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Biden then said that Obama is going to enact executive amnesty before the end of the year if Congress does...

The Framers of our Constitution were well versed in the lessons of the mid-17th century English Civil War. It was in revolution that Parliamentary forces denied certain powers to Charles I. Obama, the pretend President of a formerly Free Republic, has claimed powers denied to an English king 370 years ago. During negotiations between royalist and parliamentary forces in 1643, Charles I itemized his demands and authority: 1. Charles I proclaimed to be limited by law and parliament. From his past actions, parliament knew this was a specious, dishonest assertion. Obama often recites his fealty to the law. Not even...

Top Democrat Congressman: Get Ready for Executive Amnesty for 5 Million Illegals This is not a joke, Friend. Here’s more from the same report: President Obama is preparing to offer universal amnesty through executive action. The order is expected to happen sometime next week after Obama returns from a trip to Europe. Friend – moments like this are why the NRCC exists. The House GOP is the only group who can oppose him. We need 1,000 donations before the FEC deadline this Sunday to show Obama he made a huge mistake! House Conservatives are not taking Obama's trampling of the...

By the end of the summer, President Barack Obama will make what some activists and legal experts say could be the "boldest move" of his presidency as he prepares to move without Congress on immigration reform. The coming executive actions to change immigration policy could become the defining moment in a second term marred by congressional gridlock. Amid fierce debate over the crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border they also could set up a potential political firestorm just weeks before the crucial midterm elections. Perhaps most importantly, Obama's coming executive actions could also test the limits of presidential power. "Depending on...

A leftover from yesterday via CNS but a fine note on which to end the week. There are three ways the House could punish Obama the next time he decides he wants to rewrite a statutory deadline for ObamaCare or unilaterally declare war in the Middle East or amnestize a few million illegals. They could impeach him, of course, but that’ll go nowhere in the Senate and will provoke a nasty public backlash against the GOP. That option is too hot. They could do what Boehner’s actually doing right now, suing Obama on separation-of-powers grounds, but most legal experts...

Conservatives increasingly see the Supreme Court as a last line of defense against the Obama administration’s agenda. Despite the court’s 5-4 vote to uphold the president’s healthcare law, the justices have more frequently pushed back at what conservatives see as overreach by the White House. A view that the High Court is having more success than the GOP House as a check on President Obama has been developing for some time, but became all the more prevalent after its decisions in the recent Hobby Lobby and Noel Canning cases. “What we are experiencing is a high court reining in an...

Mark Levin reported on his radio show tonight that an illegal law enforcement unit run by Obama’s henchmen are blocking the Inspector General at the EPA from investigating any wrongdoing at the EPA and they’ve been doing it for years! This is from testimony that will be given tomorrow by the Assistant EPA Inspector General for Investigations: ASSOCIATED PRESS – A unit run by President Obama’s political staff inside the Environmental Protection Agency operates illegally as a “rogue law enforcement agency” that has blocked independent investigations by the EPA’s inspector general for years, a top investigator told Congress. The assistant...

With Congress paralyzed, President Obama has promised to use his “pen and phone” to overcome the ongoing dysfunction and get some work done. And the White House has already acted several times to help improve America’s economy. But such policies, no matter how valuable, will achieve little if we do not fix our broken democracy. Allow me to suggest some ideas for how the president can do just that. First, some historical context. Presidents have long acted within their authority, from Jefferson’s purchase of Louisiana without consulting Congress to Lincoln’s freeing the slaves by proclamation. In recent decades, at a...

Has President Obama's impunity come to an end? After five years of his flouting the letter and spirit of the law in an increasingly brazen fashion, congressional Republicans have been starting to ramp up their rhetoric about Obama's lawlessness, their most concerted effort on the issue to date. Several new reports from top Republicans underscore the breadth of Obama's executive overreach. Viewed comprehensively, it involves laws ranging from healthcare to immigration to privacy to technology to social issues to national security matters and more. Scandals like Benghazi, Operation Fast and Furious, the IRS targeting of conservative groups, NSA spying, CIA...

On Friday, Pres. Obama mocked Republicans who complain about his use of executive actions to "fix" Obamacare without involving Congress. **SNIP** "The reason they don't do it, of course, is that we already took the best ideas that are out there about bringing down costs and covering more people. Yes, there have been some disruptions. Yes, we lost that first month out of the gate. And we've worked hard to fix problems that have come up without any cooperation from them; in fact, they've complained when we fix them. They say, how dare you fix the things we were complaining...

Most sentient humans have ideological beliefs. When they become acceptable substitutes for rational thought they can be pernicious.Jonathan Turley, whom I consider a liberal in the old-fashioned sense and not what I refer to as a "librul," today testified before the House Judiciary Committee on usurpations of congressional authority by the President, regulatory agencies and the courts -- often with congressional acquiescence if not encouragement. The transcript of his prepared remarks is at the second link. He neither had an epiphany on the road to Damascus nor became a "far right" conservative; he has long held and expressed the views stated in his...

The president issued an executive order last week purporting to raise the minimum wage for employees of federal contractors to $10.10 an hour. The order is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court made clear in Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer that “the President’s power, if any, to issue the [executive] order must stem either from an act of Congress or from the Constitution itself.” Furthermore, “when the president takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb, for then he can rely only upon his own constitutional powers minus any constitutional...

While speaking with Fox News' Neil Cavuto, Judge Andrew Napolitano said impeachment is the only way to stop President Obama from ruling by executive fiat, Newsmax reported Thursday. "The president is doing the opposite of what he was elected to do," he said. "At some point he is totally frustrating what Congress has written." He also told Cavuto that when Obama takes unilateral action, picking and choosing what laws -- or portions of laws -- to enforce, he is actually telling people how to avoid the law. The president has unilaterally delayed portions of Obamacare without going through Congress, and...

Jonathan Turley and Nicholas Rosenkranz with Megyn Kelly, discussion Obama's abuse of power.

“I taught constitutional law for ten years. I take the Constitution very seriously. The biggest problems that were 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, and that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m President of the United States of America.” - Obama, 2008 What a difference six years makes. The above video, released tonight by The Heritage Foundation, shows two different faces of Barack Obama when it comes to executive branch. In 2008, then-candidate Obama said that America's "biggest...

As you may recall, we tend to reserve the "pure gold" descriptor for uniquely egregious instances of Obama hypocrisy. This one surely qualifies. American Commitment clips a stump speech snippet from 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama, scrupulous defender of our constitutional structure, and righteous critic of executive power grabs. Behold:

Submitted by Ron Paul of the Ron Paul Institute, President Obama’s state of the union pledge to “act with or without Congress” marks a milestone in presidential usurpation of Congressional authority. Most modern presidents have used executive orders to change and even create laws without Congressional approval. However President Obama is unusually brazen, in that most Presidents do not brag about their plans to rule by executive order in state of the union speeches. Sadly, his pledge to use his pen to implement laws and polices without the consent of Congress not only received thunderous applause from representatives of the...

The ugly rash of financial services executive suicides appears to have spread once again. Following the jumping deaths of 2 London bankers and a former-Fed economist in the US, The Denver Post reports Richard Talley, founder and CEO of American Title, was found dead in his home from self-inflicted wounds - from a nail-gun. Talley's company was under investigation from insurance regulators. Via The Denver Post, Richard Talley, 57, and the company he founded in 2001 were under investigation by state insurance regulators at the time of his death late Tuesday, an agency spokesman confirmed Thursday. It was unclear how...