The Outlaw Barrack Obama

     When President Obama announced his dictate last week regarding a major change in the immigration policy, it was just one more example of the lawless behavior of an out of control executive. Whether you agree with the policy or not, the President does not have the Constitutional authority to make law. The people's representatives in Congress are the only branch of government that can make law. And therein lies the rub between Liberals and Conservatives. The left believes that unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats and activist judges should be allowed to create new laws and rights. And in this case, they believe a President should be able to push an agenda by creating law without the representation of the people. This runs completely contrary to the founder's intent and is a violation of the letter of the law spelled out in the enumerated powers embodied in the Constitution. And we are, after all, a nation of laws and not of men.
     This latest foray into lawlessness by the President has been proceeded by many others. It began with the violation of contract law when the President confiscated the equity of the GM bond-holders and gave it to the unions. It continued with his refusal to obey two federal judges' rulings to end the drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP oil spill. Over the last three and a half years there have been many other examples of this lawless behavior. Some are blatant, like when the President flat out stated that he and his Justice Department were not going to enforce The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Other examples were more subtle, as when the President made the recess appointment of Richard Coudray as head of the new consumer protection bureau. The problem with this appointment is that the Senate was not in recess. The President has even publicly stated that if the Congress does not act on his agenda, that he would act on his own. This statement alone would cause the founding fathers to roll over in their graves.
     The President doesn't seem to understand that leadership is different from dictating. The job of any President is to have an agenda that he feels will serve the people best without infringing on the basic freedoms protected by the Constitution. He does this by negotiating with his opponents and by compromising some of what he wants to allow his opposition to support other items that he wants. He doesn't publicly demonize those who disagree with him, nor does he blame everyone and everything for the failures of his policies. This President could learn something from one of his Democrat predecessors, Harry S. Truman, who said, "The buck stops here." Or from Dwight D. Eisenhower who had a speech in the breast pocket of his suit on D-Day accepting complete responsibility for the invasion's failure, had things gone wrong. He never had to use the speech, but this incident stands as an example of real leadership, as opposed to the It's not my fault-Things were worse than we thought-It's Bush's fault-There was a tsunami in Japan-Europe is crumbling-The Arab spring-ATMs-The Republican minority in Congress-Banks are evil-Rich people are greedy kind of leadership that we now have in the White House.