Taken individually, its easy to excuse individual episodes of executive branch overreach. But taking a step to see the broader picture exposes the stunning breadth of President Obama’s lawlessness. Consider just this month’s news:
» Libya: Piloted U.S. aircraft and unmanned drones are currently bombing targets in Libya. The Pentagon’s general counsel and acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel told Obama these activities qualify as “hostilities” under the War Powers Act of 1973.
Obama then had the choice of either admitting that the War Powers Act was unconstitutional or asking Congress for authorization to use force. Instead, the president simply overruled the top lawyers from the Defense and Justice departments. The bombings continue today.
» Strategic Petroleum Reserve: Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced that he would be releasing 30 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Created after the 1973-74 oil embargo, the SPR is meant to protect the U.S. from a “severe energy supply disruption.” Obama initially pointed to the Libyan conflict as such a disruption.
But that changed when reporters noted that Libya’s oil production has been shuttered for months. Now the president claims high summer gas prices justify the SPR’s release. It appears Obama’s falling poll numbers are the only emergency motivating the president’s SPR release.
» Operation Fast and Furious: When Obama was inaugurated, the established policy of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was to arrest all suspected gun traffickers.
Then the bureau’s Phoenix office implemented Operation Fast and Furious, under which field agents were to monitor, but not stop, illegal gun sales to Mexico. ATF planned to recover the weapons from crime scenes and use them to prosecute gun traffickers linked to drug cartels.
But when two Fast and Furious guns were found at the scene of a U.S. Border Patrol agent’s murder, the Department of Justice pulled the plug on the program. Internal emails reveal that ATF acting Director Kenneth Melson not only approved the program but watched illegal gun sales happen on video from his desk in Washington.
Considering how bureaucratic and hierarchical the Justice Department is, it is highly unlikely Attorney General Eric Holder did not approve this program.
» No Child Left Behind: Education Secretary Arne Duncan claims that 80,000 of the nation’s 100,000 public schools could be labeled as “failing” this year under the No Child Left Behind Act.
But instead of going to Congress for a legislative fix, Duncan plans to unilaterally grant waivers to states exempting them from the law. To get the waiver, however, the applying states must first approve reforms endorsed by Duncan. It is far from clear if Duncan has authority to issue such waivers.
» Consumer Financial Protection Board: On June 23, Elizabeth Warren identified six areas that the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would regulate.
The problem is that Warren is not CFPB’s director. Instead, Obama appointed her as a special assistant to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, thus bypassing the constitutionally mandated Senate confirmation process that applies to the CFPB director’s job.
In each of these cases Obama chose ideology and expediency over leadership and the rule of law. Perhaps all presidents does so once in a while, but Obama has turned an occasional exception into his modus operandi.
Conn Carroll is a senior editorial writer for The Washington Examiner. He can be reached at [email protected].
