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Republicans to press "Fast and Furious" suitWASHINGTON | Sun Jul 1, 2012 1:11pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives plans to file a civil suit in federal court in the next several weeks over the Obama administration's refusal to give Congress documents about a failed gun-running probe, House Speaker John Boehner said on Sunday. The Justice Department said on Friday it would not prosecute Attorney General Eric Holder after he was cited a day earlier by the Republican-led House for contempt of Congress for withholding some documents related to the probe. Holder heads the department. **SNIP**...

“We will be prepared,” said Obama aide Valerie Jarrett this week when asked about White House contingency plans in the event that Obamacare is struck down by the Supreme Court. But on Twitter, Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic said something interesting: that the White House has executive orders ready to go if Obamacare is struck down. “Their content and timing I don’t know,” Marc says. “But they’ve got contingency plans a-plenty.” It’s not clear to me exactly how much of Obamacare can be reinstated via executive order. It’s certainly conceivable that the president could issue costly mandates that affect private...

President Barack Obama may have actually asserted executive privilege once before to protect Attorney General Eric Holder from congressional scrutiny, documents and congressional records obtained by The Daily Caller indicate. During Holder’s 2009 confirmation hearings, Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn pressed Holder for details on the role he played in helping get Puerto Rican terrorists — members of the violent Armed Forces for National Liberation, who set off 120 bombs throughout the U.S. killing at least six Americans and permanently harming others — clemency during the Bill Clinton administration. (Snip) Since Clinton had waived such executive privilege, it appears as

"I think the issue of executive power and executive privilege is one that is subject to abuse and in an Obama presidency what you will see will be a sufficient respect for law and the co-equal branches of government that I hope we don't find ourselves in a situation in which we would have aides being subpoenaed for what I think everything acknowledges is some troublesome information out there," then-Senator Barack Obama told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in a 2007 interview.

DEVELOPING ... President Obama has granted an 11th-hour request by Attorney General Eric Holder to exert executive privilege over Fast and Furious documents, a last-minute maneuver that appears unlikely to head off a contempt vote against Holder by Republicans in the House. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is expected to forge ahead with its meeting on the contempt resolution anyway.

President Obama’s claim that he can refuse to deport 800,000 aliens here in the country illegally illustrates the unprecedented stretching of the Constitution and the rule of law. He is laying claim to presidential power that goes even beyond that claimed by the Bush administration, in which I served. There is a world of difference in refusing to enforce laws that violate the Constitution (Bush) and refusing to enforce laws because of disagreements over policy (Obama).

Obama Has Signed ANOTHER Martial Law Executive Order — Click below to DEMAND Congress STOP Obama’s “Emergency Powers” Executive Order: https://secure.conservativedonations.com/rm_martial-law/?a=2565 ALERT: Obama’s preparations to institute MARTIAL LAW IN AMERICA are coming together quickly — he has now signed ANOTHER “Executive Order”, this time to take control of America’s domestic natural gas production! It’s getting WORSE — we MUST STOP HIM NOW! SEND A MESSAGE TO EVERY SINGLE U.S. CONGRESSMAN, DEMANDING THEY STOP BARACK OBAMA’S “EMERGENCY POWERS” MARTIAL LAW EXECUTIVE ORDER: SEND YOUR MESSAGE NOW!

And how is funding the terror-supporting Palestinians in our national security interests?

On Monday morning, my coffee was tainted, thanks to Drudge, by a story he posted in large letters at the top of his site. It was a stomach-turning, New York Times piece from Sunday that crowed about the Dear Leader Barack Obama (or whatever his name is) unilaterally deciding that he is proudly using his Executive powers to bypass Congress. Never mind that the Executive branch does not have the power to bypass Congress in matters unrelated to the limited confines of Executive authority, and even among the Executive powers, the President must have the consent of Congress in certain...

Candidate for Senate Dan Liljenquist (left) pledged to The New American that should he be elected to the U.S. Senate he will offer legislation explicitly repealing the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). In a press conference held on April 24 at 2:00 p.m. (MDT), the former Utah State Senator and current GOP challenger to six-term Senator Orrin Hatch described the indefinite detention provisions of the NDAA as “an overreach and a violation of the Bill of Rights.” He said that had he been in office when Congress voted to pass the NDAA he would have...

In today’s NYT, Charlie Savage reports on how President Obama evolved from a fierce critic of unilateral exercise of executive power to a proponent. As a senator and presidential candidate, he had criticized George W. Bush for flouting the role of Congress. And during his first two years in the White House, when Democrats controlled Congress, Mr. Obama largely worked through the legislative process to achieve his domestic policy goals. But increasingly in recent months, the administration has been seeking ways to act without Congress.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A finance executive at MF Global Holdings Ltd invoked her right against self-incrimination as lawmakers heard from officials who played critical roles in the final days of the futures brokerage, when a huge and still unexplained shortfall in customer money surfaced. Assistant Treasurer Edith O'Brien, believed to have been involved in authorizing a $175 million transfer that may have included customer funds, three days before MF Global's bankruptcy filing on October 31, declined to testify on Wednesday. "On advice of counsel I respectfully decline to answer based on my constitutional right," she told subcommittee chairman Randy Neugebauer...

White House: Martial Law Executive Order 'Standard and Routine' White House press secretary Jay Carney dismissed the idea today that a recent executive order issued was 'martial law', and called it 'standard and routine'

Resources Preparedness” executive order: Power grab or mere update? posted at 10:30 am on March 18, 2012 by Ed Morrissey We’re getting a lot of e-mail this weekend about an executive order issued on Friday afternoon by President Obama titled “National Defense Resources Preparedness.” While the timing of the EO is curious — why send it out on a Friday afternoon when an administration is usually trying to sneak bad news past the media? — the general impact of it is negligible. This EO simply updates another EO (12919) that had been in place since June 1994, and amended several...

On March 16th, President Obama signed a new Executive Order which expands upon a prior order issued in 1950 for Disaster Preparedness, and gives the office of the President complete control over all the resources in the United States in times of war or emergency. The National Defense Resources Preparedness order gives the Executive Branch the power to control and allocate energy, production, transportation, food, and even water resources by decree under the auspices of national defense and national security. The order is not limited to wartime implementation, as one of the order's functions includes the command and control of...

In the 13 years since he suffered a string of political setbacks and quit the third most powerful job in Washington, Newt Gingrich has been busily laying the foundation for a comeback to an even grander perch. On any given day, the former Speaker of the House can be found on a chartered jet headed to Iowa to train future GOP candidates through his American Solutions group, or in Phoenix discussing ways to lower health-care costs with drug makers through his for-profit Center for Health Transformation. He might also be in Philadelphia, narrating a film produced by Gingrich Productions, or...

Rick Perry established a new gold standard for hawkish foreign policy at Saturday night’s GOP debate in New Hampshire. Not only is he mad President Obama withdrew US forces, he wants to put them back on the ground there immediately. “I would send troops back into Iraq,” Rick Perry told a New Hampshire audience at Saturday night’s GOP debate, warning that without yet another military operation in Iraq it would fall under the influence of neighboring Iran. “I think it’s a huge error for us,” he said. “We’re going to see Iran in my opinion, move back in at literally...

No wonder he had to circumvent Congress to enact this disaster. (The Hill) — President Obama on Thursday will unveil a summer-jobs initiative that the White House says is already on track to create 180,000 “work opportunities” in the private sector in 2012. That is the number of opportunities, which includes mentoring and unpaid internships, that companies have told the administration they are willing to create. Some 70,000 jobs are paid, the White House says. The initiative was hatched after Congress failed to approve a $1.5 billion summer-jobs fund that President Obama had been seeking as part of the American...

(CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama is ready to take “small, medium and large” actions without the consent of Congress, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said. Carney on Tuesday explained further Obama’s “We Can’t Wait” strategy of addressing problems without Congress. This would be done through executive orders and other actions Carney said.

Texas Governor Rick Perry is playing up his status as a “Washington outsider” in a new TV ad released today, which will air on broadcast and cable TV in Iowa. The ad flashes a picture of the four current or former members of Congress running against Perry in the Republican presidential race: former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, Texas Representative Ron Paul, and Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann. “If Washington’s the problem, why trust a congressman to fix it?” the announcer says. The announcer says Perry’s opponents have spent a combined 63 years in Congress “leaving us...