From this excellent essay:
As a reaction to the crack epidemic of the 1980s, many federal drug laws carry strict mandatory sentences. This has stirred unease in Congress and sparked a bipartisan effort to revise and relax some of the more draconian laws.In other words, we have a lawless administration.
Traditionally — meaning before Barack Obama — that’s how laws were changed: We have a problem, we hold hearings, we find some new arrangement ratified by Congress and signed by the president.
That was then. On Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder, a liberal in a hurry, ordered all U.S. attorneys to simply stop charging nonviolent, non-gang-related drug defendants with crimes that, while fitting the offense, carry mandatory sentences. Find some lesser, non-triggering charge. How might you do that? Withhold evidence — for example, the amount of dope involved.
In other words, evade the law, by deceiving the court if necessary. “If the companies that I represent in federal criminal cases” did that, said former deputy attorney general George Terwilliger, “they could be charged with a felony.”
But such niceties must not stand in the way of an administration’s agenda. Indeed, the very next day, it was revealed that the administration had unilaterally waived Obamacare’s cap on a patient’s annual out-of-pocket expenses — a one-year exemption for selected health insurers that is nowhere permitted in the law. It was simply decreed by an obscure Labor Department regulation.
[...]
Yet this president is not only untroubled by what he’s doing, but open and rather proud. As he tells cheering crowds on his never-ending campaign-style tours: I am going to do X — and I’m not going to wait for Congress.
That’s caudillo talk. That’s banana republic stuff. In this country, the president is required to win the consent of Congress first.
At stake is not some constitutional curlicue. At stake is whether the laws are the law. And whether presidents get to write their own.
Since the essay posted on the web on August 15, the essay has garnered 3797 comments. One of the comments:
FORWARNED wrote:
1:00 AM EST
President Obama's approach is worse than Charles describes. Legislation is a product of compromise. If President Obama is allowed to continue disregarding laws he doesn't personally agree with, the legislative process is a sham. Legislators can have no confidence that provisions they negotiate for as part of the compromise will be enforced.
Plus, let's not forget that Obamacare was his own legislation, passed only by Democrats, and even then, he's refusing to enforce it!
The only recourse at this point, since Obama's lawlessness is expanding and quickening, is a new judicial interpretation of standing that would give citizens a right to sue for enforcement of the law as written.
8 comments:
I've always disagreed with the Drug Laws in the US. The truth is, they do result in more black people being imprisoned than white people. It is true that Crack is cheaper, and therefore more poor black people end up in prison because more white people can afford Coke rather than Crack.
Yes, I have always disagreed with the drug laws.
But, I disagree with the notion that Obama is King of the United States even more.
Pasto,
End runs around the Constitution = breaking of the Presidential Oath.
Obama should be impeached, then removed from office ans then tried for treason.
I agree, AOW. Unfortunately, he is not the first President to do it.
If he truly were unprecedented in his behavior, it would be a lot easier to impeach him.
Also, the other day, I saw someone write something which really summed up our shitty situation as citizens.
It went something like this:
Bush/Cheney and the US Congress set Obama up, coming into office, with an unlimited excuse to exercise unlimited power, in the form of a war which never ends.
Remember that original "War on Terror" bill back in 2002 said the President could do what he needed to do to win the "War on Terror".
We didn't realize we were the terror.
I suspect you are on vacation by now, and I must rush to apologize for the typos you will find in my book. It's beyond embarrassing.
I finally saw a copy of my book a few days ago, having been living and travelling in South America since long before my book was edited and published in Canada. No wonder the editor refused to put his name on it. The numerous errors in my book were not there when I turned in the mss. My mistake in having such a person do this work.
On the bright side, I can change things for the next edition to come soon. I need only contact the publisher with my corrections on approx. 100 pages to make it readable.
Had I known in advance I would not have allowed it to go forward as is. But, since you have a copy now, please forgive and read it as well as mistakes permit. Damn.
Will contact you again as soon as Internet connection allows from deep in the Amazon jungle here in Slowsville, Peru.
My best from Iquitos.
Dag Walker
Dag,
I may be a high ranking officer of the Grammar Police. However, when I'm reading, I look past the mechanical errors and read for content.
I haven't had much time to read on vacation, but the little I've read in your book is very good. I certainly don't regret buying your first book and look forward to your next book.
Dag's first book is good, though it seems to have little relation, if any, to the counter-Jihad.
It is filed with Dag's usual beautiful and sadly funny writing.
I didn't notice the errors. I'm one of those people who just doesn't care much.
I left for South America in Sept. 2011, and at that time I had a mss. pretty well edited for all things, but I couldn't do anything further with it because I was off to the Andes and the Amazon; so I left it in what I thought was a capable editor/publisher's hands. Little did I know till I finally saw a copy of my book for the first time last week that the editor is a leftard who hates my book, and me. The book is 231 pp. and I have corrected 93 pages so far. This is what I call sabotage. I'm a too hasty typist fairly often, but this is way beyond that. I'm humiliated. Still, thank you for your generousity. I can, if I get a proper Internet connection here, fix all this for coming copies. Sorry about the mess.
Re. the lack of emphasis on Islam and counter-jihad writing in the book. That is very specifically deliberate on my part.
We all recall the slanders and general dumping on, for example, Robert Spencer et al when he and they were accused of priming the Anders Breivik pump, as it were. I am not so high on the list of leftard hit-men, but I was concerned that if they came after me as well that the world at large would take the media word for my person, leaving me to make up for it as well as possible in the aftermath. Thus, I decided to put out a book about my other concerns, showing that I am more than the parodic thing the media would paint me as. My book is meant to show the world, should that time ever come, that I might be a lot of nasty things, but that I am a well-rounded nasty guy and that I have many interests that others likely share.
I imagine it will come as some surprise to all to know that I am close to finishing and publishing three books on Iquitos that again have nothing to do with counter-jihad: I am close to completing a book on historical/rubber boom architecture in Iquitos, Peru. I am close as well to finishing a book on the jungle drug ayahuasca. And I am done in all but the editing with a book of general interest about Iquitos.
To keep myself alive in the jungle here I have an historical/architectural walking tour company; I am soon to publish an historical postcard book; and I am looking at a few other options to pay the bills here.
Should all of this fail somehow, I am as always, daily attuned to jihad in the greater world, and I have tentative plans to go to Egypt to make a living fighting for freedom against the fascists now in control of formerly Christian lands. "School teachers with guns," as you all might recall....
I do read the blogs daily, but the connection in the jungle is severely bad. Comments are almost impossible.
Till next time I get a live wire,
My best from Iquitos, Peru
Dag.
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