Free Republic

During the Clean Energy Investment Summit hosted by the White House on June 16, the administration announced a series of initiatives that will include “more than $4 billion in private sector commitments and executive actions to scale up investment in clean energy innovation.” A statement posted by the White House press secretary’s office noted that Vice President Joe Biden would “deliver remarks highlighting more than $4 billion of independent commitments by major foundations, institutional investors, and other long-term investors to fund climate change solutions,” but also stated that the White House “is announcing a series of executive actions that will...

Of all the annoying things President Obama does, one of the worst is his hectoring Republicans and conservatives for their partisanship when he is the quintessential divisive partisan. The Washington Post reports that the day after the shootings in Charleston, South Carolina, Obama began the day angry and frustrated and ended it admitting that he has been unable to change the culture of polarization and gridlock in Washington, which he is obviously blaming for the climate that led to the shootings. Please imagine the level of arrogance it would take to assume one could, as president of the United States,...

During a press conference in Germany today, President Obama admitted that he personally made the decision to put his actions on immigration on hold while the legality of his actions are being considered in court. [Snip] “Until we get clarity there, I don’t want to bring people in, have them apply, and jump through a lot of hoops only to have it deferred and delayed further,” he said.

...Today, looking at the chart, there are many more “promises kept” than there are “promises broken.” Yet anyone who has been paying attention over the last few years would surely see that Mr. Obama had broken a tremendous amount of promises. So why does PolitiFact still have Mr. Obama’s promises kept at nearly twice those broken? I decided to take a look. The first thing I did was see what promises were considered broken. It’s a fairly hefty list, but some of the very largest are completely missing. The biggest, and most famous, broken promise is that “if you like...

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest confirmed Monday that President Obama is "very interested" in the idea of raising taxes through unitlateral executive action. "The president certainly has not indicated any reticence in using his executive authority to try and advance an agenda that benefits middle class Americans," Earnest said in response to a question about Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) calling on Obama to raise more than $100 billion in taxes through IRS executive action. "Now I don't want to leave you with the impression that there is some imminent announcement, there is not, at least that I know of,"...

Heard on Rush Limbaugh Show a few minutes ago.  Rush mentioned the ban on  SS109 and M855 ammunition being pushed by the Obama administration.  Rush said that when people began buying ammunition two years ago, the left said that they were kooks.  Now they have been proven to be correct. Rush did say that the ban was on specific ammunition, but that people should not be fooled.  They want to go after all ammunition, and they have to start someplace. Rush is not a "gun guy"; but he is a far sighted political thinker, and he can see the...

It was as if the editorial board over at the Washington Post suddenly stopped what they were doing, looked up from their work, and dropped their jaws as a (rare) coherent thought suddenly manifested inside their collective brains. “Wait a minute…” they muttered, as the thought of Obama using executive action played over and over again in their minds. “If he can change the law unilaterally,” a gradual expression of horror engulfed their faces, “then if Republicans end up winning in 2016, they could just -- ” I imagine the rest of that thought was almost unbearable for the liberal...

President Obama sees executive action as the primary way to build his legacy, but years from now, he could regret his penchant for going it alone. By so frequently testing the limits of his executive authority, Obama has set a precedent for future White House occupants to bypass Congress with even more regularity, say legal scholars and political insiders. A President Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush, for example, could point to Obama as the model for interpreting “prosecutorial discretion,” taking a similar position on whether their administration would enforce laws conflicting with their political aspirations. Obama used executive action to...

In his “fourth quarter,” he feels free to ignore popular opinion, the rule of law, and Congress. Until now there were two types of peaceful American change. One was a president, like Franklin D. Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan, working with Congress to alter American life from the top down by passing a new agenda. The other was popular-reform pressure, as happened in the 1890s or 1960s, to change public opinion and force government to make new laws or change existing ones. Barack Obama has introduced a quite different, third sort of revolution. He seeks to enact change that both the...

It's a little known fact that President Reagan's 1981 firing of the air traffic controllers for an illegal strike was watched closely by ... the Kremlin. It concluded that President Reagan was a man of his word — and not to be messed with. Well, it seems the tyrants in Havana have been watching U.S. domestic dramas closely, too. In Cuban dictator Raul Castro's weekend speech on President Obama's move toward normalizing relations, he noted that President Obama issued a lot of executive orders, something that corresponds to how the Castro brothers rule, the better to get around a dissenting...

Two top aides to President Obama hailed his “year of action” as a success Monday, saying the president took more than 80 executive actions without Congress to help the middle class. National Economic Council Director Jeffrey Zients and Domestic Policy Council Director Cecilia Munoz said in a blog post that Mr. Obama will try to work the the new Republican Congress next year, but will also “continue to use every authority available to make progress through executive actions” in 2015.

Cuba's Castro Brothers Get Big Present From Santa Obama Foreign Policy: Just as its patron Venezuela hit the rocks, Cuba got a last-minute rescue from none other than President Obama, who announced a Santa Claus-like package of wish-list goodies for the Castro brothers. Why? In many ways, President Obama's announced plan to normalize relations with Cuba, lift the embargo, extend trade credits and remove Cuba from the state sponsors of terror list is about on par with the rest of his foreign policy. It was done by executive order without consulting Congress, just like last month's decision to temporarily legalize...

Great 3:23 minute video interview at link. President Obama reportedly is using a unique form of executive action known as the “presidential memorandum” at a historic pace – a tactic that allows him to, technically, claim he’s not over-using executive orders while still pursuing high-level policy changes without involvement from Congress. A review by USA Today, published Wednesday, shows that, in fact, Obama has issued more memoranda than any U.S. president in history. He’s issued 198 – more than the 195 executive orders from his White House. The executive action is strikingly similar to an executive order, with only slight...

A federal judge has found parts of President Obama’s new deportation amnesty to be unconstitutional, issuing a scathing memo Tuesday accusing him of usurping Congress’s power to make laws, and dismantling most of the White House’s legal reasoning for circumventing Congress. Judge Arthur J. Schwab, sitting in the western district of Pennsylvania, said presidents do have powers to use discretion in deciding how to enforce the law, but said Mr. Obama’s new policy goes well beyond that, setting up a full system for granting legal protections to broad groups of individuals. He said Mr. Obama writing laws — a power...

Trey Gowdy DESTROYS Marielena Hincapie for bringing race as an excuse for republicans response to the immigration debate At Immigration Executive Action Hearing. Earlier in the hearing: Steve Cohen TN Democrat in Q & A AT 4:42 is the question to Marielena Hincapie Ms Hincapie, do you believe that the reason why the response to this has been so different for this president is because of the number or is there another reason? Marielena Hincapie: I do believe this is different - he is the first African American president….he is being attacked for a number of issues..... 5:44 Minutes Congressman...

Border Security: President Obama's executive amnesty doesn't just spare the illegals who "mow our lawns" and "make our beds." It also springs from local jails criminals held for deportation, putting them back on the street. In a just-released fact sheet, the White House describes Obama's "immigration accountability executive action" as "cracking down on illegal immigration." The president's actions, it intones, "will help secure the border" and increase the chances that illegals "will be caught and sent back." In fact, Obamanesty increases the chances they'll commit dangerous crimes in our cities. According to a new memo from Department of Homeland Security...

House Minority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) spoke at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute's annual public policy conference on Sept. 30, 2014 in Washington, D.C. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr(CNSNews.com) -- At a press briefing on Tuesday, House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said that President Obama had "broad authority" to take unilateral action on immigration but failed to directly answer a question asking him where specifically the Constitution authorized President Obama to unilaterally decided not to enforce immigration laws. CNSNews.com asked Hoyer: “The Constitution requires that the president ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed.’ Where specifically in the Constitution does...

When President Obama took office in 2009, his party was in better shape than it had been since the era following Watergate. The Democrats controlled both houses of Congress by very comfortable margins. They had just regained the White House in a historic election. They believed they would control Washington for decades, if not generations, to come. Yet fewer than six years later, their congressional majorities have been annihilated and their prospects for retaining the presidency in 2016 are far less promising than they were just a month ago. Virtually all this devastation has been caused by Obama himself. Even...

Early in our republic, it was considered crass and imperial for a president to issue too many executive orders.  Remember, our political experiment was the first in the world to unite a federal system of states with a central government elected by popular vote—even the title that George Washington would assume was a matter of intense study and debate.  Finally they settled on the unassuming “Mr. President”. President Washington issued a total of eight executive orders in his two terms in office.  And this was a president with a mandate.  His election was unanimous.  Before the Civil War, a total...