If you are a federal official of any type...even a forest ranger...than you have to obey Presidential executive orders.
If you are a state official...even a state forestry official, then you have to obey the governor’s executive orders.
Beyond that, the two shall never meet. A state official of any type...is not bound by the President’s executive orders...end of the story.
When you look at your local sheriff or city police chief...he’s bound by law (city, county, state, or federal), and that is the limit. Executive orders...are a totally different ballgame, and it’s obvious that news people are the last people on the Earth that you want to get advice from.
What makes the current picture a bit comical is that the President is now telling various federal agencies not to obey the law, and they are carrying out this directive. Why bother even meeting and passing any laws at the federal level...at Congress or the Senate....if they can’t be obeyed?
My view is simply Blitzer is an idiot. The word "defy" means to challenge, to confront, to resist, or disregard. Making a statement claiming a sheriff or anyone else can't defy something is asinine. Its like saying, "I order you to follow orders!" My response would of course be, "Good luck with that." Sure people may be fired or even arrested but no person HAS to follow an executive order.
I should photoshop a picture a Blitzer going around beeping and repeating, "Resistance is futile. Resistance is futile."
No, my little obama-bot blitzer, resistance is not futile at all. Its fun and makes ya feel good. All the cool kids are doing it.
What that means is, that in general, an EO has not heretofor been considered part of the law, but rather is subordinate to the law in all respects. EOs have always been limited to the empty space between two or more provisions of law that appear to be in conflict, and without which neither or all could be administered.
An example was Post Office Department employee annual and sick leave rules versus those applicable in the rest off the federal government. There were laws establishing the fact all employees earned leave, but no law had been passed regarding the carriage of post offfice leave to a federal job, or vice versa. Rather, Civil Service Commission rules provided that you couldn't bring post office leave with you into the federal government agencies, but post office rules allowed federal government agency employees to bring leave but not seniority into the post oice ~ but both rules were different yet for sick leave and annual leave ~ and even today they are diferent.
I worked for the fellow at the Post Office Department who got Truman to write one EO to fix part of the conflict. He later on prevailed on IKE to write another EO to fix another part, and finally won a Civil Service case to fix even more of the problem. There were several other steps he took to get the two rules into some degree of consistency, e.g. when former railway post office guys went to the federal government, and then back to the post office (a different agency) did they get to keep seniority?
Fellow had a nice scrap book on all of these weighty matters but I think I've pretty well covered the extent of authority of an EO and what it's used for. These things aren't even federal regulations that require publication in the Federal Register ~ although most Presidential staffs do arrange for that to be done anyway!
Obama and his crowd, for the most part, were never in federal government jobs where the EO process had any relevance ~ most of them seem to be the dregs from public interest law firms, or the non-profit world. These aren't real jobs that have to deal with real public policy or processes. They came up with this idea of EOs being something a President could issue to make things happen out of thin air.
There's another item out there of more modern etiology. The Presidential Signing Statement has recently received notice simply because Democrats didn't like what George Bush was saying in them. All these statements had provided in the past was some of the President's thoughts on the topic covered in the law ~ and maybe a few items that'd be more appropriate in an EO ~ but by putting them in the PSS they'd get published with the signed or unsigned bill in the federal register.
As students of history recall one day the Merovingians Empire woke up to the fact they had a completely new regime created by a "Mayor of the Palace". This phenomenon was NOT new, though, and is a recurring theme in human history ~ an assistant to the stable master becomes the king, or a minor regulatory matter becomes the cause of war, etc. It is a rational fear on the part of educated men that the Executive Order or the Presidential Signing Document becomes the sole source off guidance for the federal bureaucracy and the military, and the law itself becomes something ignored as a matter of course.
We are, of course, well on our way. Harry Reid has substituted the back of his hand, where he writes notes, for the United States budget or example. This makes Obama's use of EOs seem far less peculiar to the uninformed.
Technically speaking it's more restrictive than that. The President is the head of the executive branch. His orders pertain to the executive branch only i.e. the cabinet departments and their underling agencies, bureaus, etc.
EOs have (or should have) no bearing on Legislators, their staffs, Federal Judges and their clerks, etc.
Granted the overwhelming majority of fedgov employees are in the executive department, and certainly not to private citizens.