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"I think what I'd do, as president, is I would make a phone call to whoever, to the group," he said, adding later, "I'd talk to the leader. I would talk to him and I would say, 'You gotta get out -- come see me, but you gotta get out.'" "You cannot let people take over federal property," Mr. Trump said. "You can't, because once you do that, you don't have a government anymore. I think, frankly, they've been there too long." Mr. Trump said he wasn't necessarily suggesting a large-scale military action, but that "at a certain point you...

It is no secret that over recent decades, constitutionally defined powers reserved to Congress or the states have swirled into the Executive branch. As a result, no matter the name or the party, the next President will possess and put to use the autocratic power secured by Barack Obama. His will be a broad authority associated far more with the likes of brute strongmen like Hugo Chavez than with George Washington. But don’t put the entire blame on Obama, for he didn’t pull the keystone to the Framers’ division of powers and claim them all for his own. Blame early...

Last week, as readers of this blog surely know, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Zivotofsky v. Kerry, which considers the validity of a law regulating the content of U.S. passports. One constitutional question potentially implicated in the case is the scope of the Necessary and Proper Clause, in particular Congress’s power to “make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution … all other powers vested by this Constitution … in any department or officer” of the federal government. (The clause is mentioned very briefly by Jack Goldsmith here; it still leaves open the...

What philosopher Harvey Mansfield calls “taming the prince” — making executive power compatible with democracy’s abhorrence of arbitrary power — has been a perennial problem of modern politics. It is now more urgent in the United States than at any time since the Founders, having rebelled against George III’s unfettered exercise of “royal prerogative,” stipulated that presidents “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Serious as are the policy disagreements roiling Washington, none is as important as the structural distortion threatening constitutional equilibrium. Institutional derangement driven by unchecked presidential aggrandizement did not begin with Barack Obama, but his...

Philip Hamburger, the Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, gave some remarks at the Hillsdale College’s Kirby Center centered around the increase in executive power and the power of executive agencies under Republican and Democratic presidencies. This worrisome trend, which Hamburger called “administrative law,” was supposedly “developed to deal with the problems of modern society.” Yet, in his words, this increase in administrative power “could not have been anticipated by the Constitution.” Although administrative powers are “very old,” Hamburger warned that the checks and balances as well as the separation of powers were “exactly was...

With Europeans intrigued by America’s unexpected success, Alexis de Tocqueville carried out an in-depth study of the new nation in the 1830s. He was quite impressed by our divided government, which featured the separation of powers. This structure made it difficult for any one branch — executive, judicial or legislative — to acquire too much power and run roughshod over the other branches and the will of the American people. Unfortunately, today we are witnessing a largely unchecked executive branch issuing decrees that circumvent Congress while facing only tepid resistance. In civilian life, when a contract is entered into by...

Under the administration of President Barack Obama, as never before in my lifetime, there is reason to be a bit afraid of the federal government. I have written two books documenting Obama's abuses of power, his assaults on the Constitution, his wars against business and energy, his abominably reckless spending, his divisiveness, his renegade Justice Department, his regulatory expansion, his executive orders, his overall lawlessness, and more. Obama's conduct concerning Obamacare alone would be enough to get the impeachment wheels rolling for any other president. His flagrant, deliberate lies regarding almost every aspect of that horrible law and his defiant...

SEATTLE (AP) — For marijuana dispensaries around the country, the days of doing business in cash — driving around with bill-stuffed envelopes to pay the rent, or showing up at a state revenue office with $20,000 in paper bags for the tax man — can't end soon enough.

As a presumed constitutional scholar, Barack Obama should know that ... he or she cannot legislate through executive fiat or pick which parts of the law to comply with or decline. Article 2, Section 3, Clause 5 of our Constitution requires that the president “…shall take care that the Laws be carefully executed.” It doesn’t limit those laws or encapsulated provisions to the particular ones that he or she likes. ... Obama’s latest constitutional violation will exempt unions from a fee the law imposes upon all large group health plans. ...

Defense: The firing of two nuclear commanders in a week adds to a body count that suggests we have either the most corrupt and incompetent general staff in history or our military is being reshaped for other purposes. The Obama administration, which has fired no one over scandals such as its Fast and Furious Mexican gun-running operation, its criminal negligence in the terrorist attack on our Benghazi diplomatic mission, or the use of the IRS to target and intimidate political foes, seems to have a curious obsession lately about ethics and competence in the U.S. military. Last week the Air...

Having failed to convince the body of the people, the state legislature, to approve his plan to expand Medicaid in Ohio, Governor Kasich is considering a new course, one less representative and more, shall we say, authoritarian. In fact, those who enjoy a little irony, will find the name of his expedient slightly amusing: the Controlling Board. Although, it sounds a bit like the stuff of a cold-war thriller, the Controlling Board is actually a function of the state legislature and the Office of Management and Budget. It is described on OMB’s website as, “..a mechanism for handling certain limited...

After reading an article at the Onion, which I am not allowed to post on FR, I felt the need to change my position on the action in Syria... It is currently the third article on their front page: a "Poll" showing Americans are strongly in favor of sending CONGRESS to Syria and putting them on the ground. Very funny!! However, I would amend the action to include the Executive branch, all the czars, and the alphabet agencies. If they want to fight so badly, let them. There are very few I would actually keep here to monitor the progress...

Two weeks ago, the House Appropriations Committee stripped the scandal ridden Internal Revenue Service of nearly one quarter of its 2014 budget as punishment for its targeting of political groups and its costly boondoggles. Shockingly, Senate Democrats voted to increase the IRS’ budget.Last week, numerous Republicans in both chambers of Congress threatened to cut off all funding for the federal government as of Oct. 1, in response to President Obama’s unconstitutional stance that he can pick and choose which parts of ObamaCare he will implement.On July 3, the Obama administration disclosed that it would not implement ObamaCare’s employer mandate on...

I have always believed that regardless of the laws of a nation, the social fabric that binds it is woven of mutual trust between the people and their private and governmental institutions. Once that fabric is weakened, the dangers to an ordered society are extreme. This week, the holes in the U.S. social fabric are manifest, and they are caused by the administration's ever-expanding lawlessness.. The statements by the high-tech self-exile Snowden set off alarms even among those who are willing to repose their confidence in the general integrity of our intelligence services. In my case, not because I believe...

Americans voted twice for a big-government President, and now we’re beginning to experience the impact of big government. Are you shocked? It’s been four years of the President and Congress spending future generations into the oblivion of debt, the Executive Branch securing control over huge chunks of the private economy (two car companies, multiple banks and the health care industry are only part of it), and a dramatic expansion of both the defined role, and the powers of the IRS. At this point in the Obama presidency, we the people should not be surprised by a government that has purported...

When racial tensions flared in Sanford, a league of secretive peacemakers reached out to the city's spiritual and civic leaders to help cool heated emotions after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in February. When civil-rights organizers wanted to demonstrate, these federal workers taught them how to peacefully manage crowds. They even arranged a police escort for college students to ensure safe passage for their 40-mile march from Daytona Beach to Sanford to demand justice. As national figures and sign-waving protesters grabbed the spotlight after Trayvon's death, federal workers from a little-known branch of the Department of Justice labored...

Promises upon promises abound in elections. Senator Obama proved himself a masterful coaxer in 2008, feasting on the pining of an electorate disillusioned with the American political system. He was the unifier, the inspirational personage representing the solution to a failed decade marked by a rowdy Texan in the White House who squandered America’s capital in foreign lands. The next four years, and surely the next eight, were to be ones marked by a robust economic recovery, a dramatic decline in poverty, and, of course, resurgence of confidence in America’s position in the world. None of these have materialized. In...

Jay Carney says President Obama was never against signing statements, just when President Bush "abused" them. Watch what then-Senator Obama said in 2008 while running for president and decide for yourself. "His concern was with what he saw as an abuse of the signing statement by the previous administration. So that the positions he took in signing statements on the budget bill entirely consistent with that position, you need to retain the right to, as president, to be able to issue those signing statements, but obviously they should not be abused," White House press secretary Jay Carney told the press...

The Rise of Unchecked Presidential Power By Robert Eugene Simmons Jr. In order to achieve a dictatorship in a country, you have to go one of two ways. Either you have to foment a violent revolution, using the power of the military to seize the government, or you have to be voted into the position and seize the power slowly. In the USA, it is all but impossible to achieve the takeover via violent overthrow, and the separation of powers makes it difficult to take over via slow seizure of power. However, the plans of the progressives have been working...

Democratic postmortems on Barack Obama’s disappointing first year in the Oval Office have emphasized, as the president himself did, difficulties inherited from “the last eight years.” Republicans, for their part, credit public opposition to Obama’s overreaching policies. But a full explanation goes much deeper. Obama is failing because he has turned the constitutional functions of the presidency upside down. The 2010 State of the Union address nicely summed up Obama’s topsy-turvy approach to the presidency. He pressed for a new jobs bill, more domestic spending, and health care nationalization. He attributed his political setbacks not to broad opposition to his...