President Obama has shown little rhetorical mercy this summer toward companies that have sought to expatriate themselves to cut their tax bills. In a weekly radio address last month, he even called it “unpatriotic” for corporations to shun their obligations to the U.S. government by changing their nationalities — an issue that exploded this week as Burger King announced plans to relocate its headquarters to Canada.

But politicians should be slower to throw stones. For even as his administration has been measuring the guillotine for the formerly American ground-beef monarch, Obama was himself hatching a plan with the openly stated purpose of moving beyond the confines of U.S. law.