Free Republic

Executive Orders: A liberal constitutional scholar warns of the concentration of power not only in the hands of one branch of government but in a single man who ignores the Constitution and acts of Congress on a whim. As the story goes, Benjamin Franklin emerged from Independence Hall at the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on Sept. 18, 1787, when a woman asked, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" Franklin is said to have replied, "A republic, madam — if you can keep it." The Founders designed a system of checks and balances...

PRESIDENTIAL POWERS AND THE CONSTITUTION HEARINGS.

President Obama has a chance to craft a second-term legacy on climate change even as the rest of his agenda runs aground in Congress. Gun control legislation is dead; immigration reform is on life support; and reaching a fiscal deal with Republicans appears to be a long shot.

President Barack Obama will use his executive powers to protect more mountains, rivers and forests from development if Congress does not act to preserve such wild spaces, the U.S. Interior Secretary said on Thursday. Portions of the Grand Canyon, Redwood forests in California and Caribbean seascapes have been protected under the 1906 Antiquities Act, which gives the president broad authority to put natural terrain and historic sites under federal protection. Such preservation efforts can also come through Congress but presidents in a second term have typically felt freer to designate such spaces unilaterally. On Thursday, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said...

House Republicans have violated the Constitution numerous times. They once violated our full faith and credit clause and threaten to do so again. They seek to undermine the post office, which is a constitutional requirement. They refuse the authority of the US Supreme Court and threaten to shut down the government. They are traitors and should be removed from office and prosecuted as such.

In the wake of the shooting at the Navy Yard, Obama spokesman Jay Carney said the president is implementing executive actions and reiterated his commitment to strengthening gun laws, including expanding background checks to sales online and at gun shows.

President Obama hopes to fill his 2012 campaign scorecard this fall by focusing on executive actions and smaller-bore legislative items. Progress on the president’s big-ticket agenda of gun control, immigration reform and the budget has been stymied by a gridlocked Congress, but the White House thinks Obama can still score several political victories. “We’ll continue to work with folks on both sides of the aisle to find common ground around common-sense ideas that’ll help middle class families. In the meantime, the president has also taken a series of executive actions,” said White House spokesman Bobby Whithorne. “These steps aren’t a...

It sure sounds scary. "Military weapons" being reimported back into the United States. Or people getting guns without background checks. But the reception being given President Obama's two new executive orders on guns largely relies on ignorance of how the current rules work. The president's executive order banning the reimportation of "military weapons" really only affects old M-1 Garand 30-06 rifles. These rifles have been used in the Civilian Marksmanship Program program and are mainly purchased by collectors. At one time they were "military weapons," but they were used in World War II and the Korean War. No other US-made...

Striving to take action where Congress would not, the Obama administration announced new steps Thursday on gun control, curbing the import of military surplus weapons and proposing to close a little-known loophole that lets felons and others circumvent background checks by registering guns to corporations. Four months after a gun control drive collapsed spectacularly in the Senate, President Barack Obama added two more executive actions to a list of 23 steps the White House determined Obama could take on his own to reduce gun violence. With the political world focused on Mideast tensions and looming fiscal battles, the move signaled...

Over the decades, the federal regulatory state has grown while legislative control over those regulatory policies has declined, and back in 2010, the GOP came up with the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act as part of their red-tape reining Pledge to America. The REINS Act would make major regulations (defined as those with a calculated price tag of $100 million or more) contingent upon Congressional approval, and it’s been introduced in each of the past three Congresses but obviously never stood a chance in the Senate. The House is poised to vote once again on the...

[snip] one of the 23 so called executive actions on gun control Obama recently signed called for doctors to ask their patients if they owned a firearm. This is not just directed at psychiatrists, but at all physicians including pediatricians. In other words, if your child confesses that Mommy and Daddy have a gun in the house that could conceivably be considered the actions of mentally defective individuals and you could be disarmed. Once we are disarmed we cease to be citizens and become subjects.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is planning a major push using executive powers to tackle the pollution blamed for global warming in an effort to make good on promises he made at the start of his second term. "We know we have to do more — and we will do more," Obama said Wednesday in Berlin. Obama's senior energy and climate adviser, Heather Zichal, said the plan would boost energy efficiency of appliances and buildings, expand renewable energy and use the Environmental Protection Agency's authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate heat-trapping pollution from coal-fired power plants. Zichal,...

. . . In the meantime, there are a number of actions President Barack Obama can take that do not require approval by Congress. We urge the administration to take additional actions using its existing authority both to improve the federal government’s ability to prevent dangerous individuals from acquiring or possessing guns and to enhance law-enforcement investigations of gun-related crime. . . . .

If the recent and growing scandals plaguing the tyrannical ObamaGov weren’t so serious, the idiotic antics of those at the top of the D.C. food chain would be almost comical. But, they are and their antics are not at all humorous.

Some explanation is necessary for this post. I first became aware of this hoax yesterday when no fewer than three people posted it on Facebook. I almost shared it, but then I decided to do a search and found the Snopes article. I learned that this began as an email prank. I knew that some folks would dismiss any article from Snopes. In fact, I too have questioned their objectivity. Therefore, I also searched for and found the Truth Or Fiction article. More importantly, I included the original sources for both articles. I then began posting this at various sites...

As was revealed in a breathtaking New York Times opinion piece today, many of Barack Obama's top advisers feel alienated from him. There is a sense within the White House that President Obama's theory of government is that "he is the government". Apparently, President Obama has personalized the presidency to such an extent that it is now seen as more about the man than about the position. Certainly that is not how the American Founding Fathers viewed the presidency. The author of this article, David Rothkopf, characterizes the president as a poor manager who is also aloof and a poor...

Departing White House deputy chief of staff Nancy-Ann DeParle said in an interview out Thursday that President Barack Obama will be “flexing his authority” more in his second term. “I think you’ll see more of his flexing his authority to use executive action, to take executive action in areas so he can do everything he can,” she told Reuters.

The following is a list, provided by the White House, of executive actions President Obama plans to take to address gun violence. - Followed by my observations on their relevance. 1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system. - Why aren’t they already doing this? And are you including illegal aliens, because something tells me you aren’t. 2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system. - Must be...

1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system. 2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system. 3. Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system. 4. Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks. 5. Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full...

The following is a list, provided by the White House, of executive actions President Obama plans to take to address gun violence. 1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system. 2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.