Posted on 12/16/2014 11:38:02 AM PST by jazusamo
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 that’s reserved for Congress, not the president.
“President Obama’s unilateral legislative action violates the separation of powers provided for in the United States Constitution as well as the Take Care Clause, and therefore is unconstitutional,” Judge Schwab wrote.
The judge also said the policy allows illegal immigrants “to obtain substantive rights.”
The memo came as part of a deportation case before the judge, and Judge Schwab’s order does not invalidate the president’s policies. But it serves as a warning shot as other direct challenges to the new amnesty begin to make their way through the courts.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
How does the case get to the SCOTUS?
The first question in my mind was: Which President appointed this Judge Schwab? ANSWER: George W. Bush
LESSON: The Presidential power to make judicial appointments has major consequences!
The next question in my mind was: With mere hours remaining in Emperor Harry's Glorious Reign to cram in everything he wanted, but was not guaranteed to get due to the game clock running down, was the cost of "The Ted Cruz Weekend" really worth it?
Was it worth it to have a vote that all sides acknowledged was only symbolic anyway, and which only got 18 Yes-votes in the end .. was it worth more to us (*especially* long-term!) to win this symbolic prize, when the price for it was Cruz's gift on a silver platter to Harry Reid of an extra weekend to ram through a whole slew of Obama's handpicked radical, young, lifetime-tenured, mindless-leftist-kneejerk, higher-court judges, to move the Dems towards their goal of Ethnically Cleansing the court system of the few remaining Judge Schwab's still there?
Let's see a show of hands: How many think a Democrat-appointed judge would rule as Schwab did? Any hands up? If so, leave it up if you think one of the young radical judges being confirmed right now as we speak, in Harry's Brave New Filibuster-Free Senate Hearings, would have ruled as Schwab did? Anyone?
And what crucial decisions will be made in future decades by these appointees who are so radically out of the mainstream and whose confirmations were so obviously DOA under the old filibuster rules, but whose future value to Democrats was so high, that Dingy Harry struck down the filibuster just for them?
Maybe those 23 don't look so silly. The 18 who voted for it sure aren't. Haven't made up my mind on Ted yet. But it'd surely be interesting to know how many of those 18 secretly wished Cruz hadn't made such an awful trade.
False premise, Karl.
Well said. I didn’t really get it until I read until reading your analysis.
Boehner? Boehner? Boehner?
Hmmm, that's a game-cnanger. Now I'll have to go rethink it through to figure out if I went wrong somewhere .... :-)
The last I heard, Obama hasn’t actually signed any executive orders that the judge could rule on. What evidence is he using to make his ruling?
OTOH, there are plenty of other news sources I trust, and GOP sources, who say GOP Senators seriously had been counting on Harry overestimating his ability to get all the leftist nominees through, when taking into account the lack of time and the remaining procedural blocks the GOP had left to them.
A Wash. Times article last night had this to say: "Much of the last week’s fighting in the Senate has dealt with timing of votes rather than the substance of the issues. Republicans are trying to use the few days left in the year to prevent Democrats from installing several dozen nominations before Republicans take control. By coming in Saturday, Mr. Reid was given an extra two days." And this: "Reid spokesman Adam Jentleson issued a statement thanking Mr. Cruz for helping them speed up a number of nominations." (Obviously sarcasm. But is it pure sarcasm, or containing some truth?)
Sure, I'll give you that Dingy Harry has been making noises about his plans to raise all those stalled nominations from the dead. But planning and wishing and hoping that he'd have time to do ALL of it, is a different thing than actually executing his plans. Time has almost run out for this lamest of ducks, and whether or not Harry really would have gotten 100% of everything on his Christmas Wish List done is/was an open question.
We'll never know for sure what might have happened, but one thing for certain is that Cruz/Lee's refusal to join Friday's 98-2 Unanimous Consent motion to adjourn 'til Monday, which resulted in the weekend session, which in turn added plenty of extra time for all of those Stench-In-The-Nostrils Nominations to be pulled up from the grave, made it MUCH more likely those nominees would/can be rammed through.
Look at senate.gov for Saturday and you'll see that ICE-Queen-To-Be Sarah Saldana and a dozen other Obama picks all got thru the next nomination phase of "Motion to Proceed to Executive Session". Her nomination process started *ages* ago (August?), yet still has not gotten all the way through the Nomination Gauntlet, with only mere hours left in the last gasp of Harry's And Nancy's And Barry's Gilded Age. Now she'll be the new Immigration Czar, the same woman who's been raving about how *utterly wonderful* and in particular how *legal* were BO's Royal Proclamations of New Immigration Law.
Still 100% comfortable with this trade we made?
To me, trading a symbolic vote for generations of awful judicial decisions is yet another example of "Style Over Substance".
You trust GOP sources???
You are exactly where I am. Absolutely no faith in the politicians or system. The monstrosity they passed the other day shows me that voting no longer matters either.
You trust Harry Reid’s word???
I understand Harry Reid’s agenda.
So how can you understand him, yet still trust his claims?
But, since Obama is not governing UNDER the Constitution, this decision doesn’t affect anything!
He will do what dictators do ignore the courts.
I hope he *does* flagrantly refuse to abide by a USSC decision, because the fallout hopefully would be to give the weak-kneed ones the backbone to finally *IMPEACH*!!!
....issuing a scathing memo Tuesday accusing him of usurping Congress’s power to make laws,...
Ehhhh, wow this will get the Socialist pResidents attention and make him think twice about doing this again...NOT.
you are too funny, the republican leadership are just like Obama, new world order socialists
I didn’t say “impeach him before the newly elected class takes their seats” now, did I?
When it comes to Ted Cruz, I certainly don’t trust the GOPe or their media mouthpieces.
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