"Can Obama write his own laws?"

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.

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.

In other words, we have a lawless administration.

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.

Obama Endorses The Ground Zero Mosque

I know that Pastorius has already posted about this. But I have to weigh in with own post!

Are any of the regular readers here at IBA surprised? I'm not!

Obama simply waited until this year's White House Ramadan dinner on August 13 to offer his support of building the towering Cordoba House which, if built, will overlook the site where 3000 Americans were murdered by Islamic terrorists on 9/11. The symbolism of the timing of Obama's announcement of support resonates with the ummah, ever in search of the elusive will of Allah!

From MSNBC:

It was the president's first public remarks about the mosque controversy. The White House previously called the matter solely a local one.

The President of the United States is advocating sacrilege at Ground Zero! From this recent column by Charles Krauthammer:

A place is made sacred by a widespread belief that it was visited by the miraculous or the transcendent (Lourdes, the Temple Mount), by the presence there once of great nobility and sacrifice (Gettysburg), or by the blood of martyrs and the indescribable suffering of the innocent (Auschwitz).

When we speak of Ground Zero as hallowed ground, what we mean is that it belongs to those who suffered and died there -- and that such ownership obliges us, the living, to preserve the dignity and memory of the place, never allowing it to be forgotten, trivialized or misappropriated.

That's why Disney's 1993 proposal to build an American history theme park near Manassas Battlefield was defeated by a broad coalition that feared vulgarization of the Civil War (and that was wiser than me; at the time I obtusely saw little harm in the venture). It's why the commercial viewing tower built right on the border of Gettysburg was taken down by the Park Service. It's why, while no one objects to Japanese cultural centers, the idea of putting one up at Pearl Harbor would be offensive.

And why Pope John Paul II ordered the Carmelite nuns to leave the convent they had established at Auschwitz. He was in no way devaluing their heartfelt mission to pray for the souls of the dead. He was teaching them a lesson in respect: This is not your place; it belongs to others. However pure your voice, better to let silence reign.

[...]

Location matters. Especially this location. Ground Zero is the site of the greatest mass murder in American history -- perpetrated by Muslims of a particular Islamist orthodoxy in whose cause they died and in whose name they killed.

[...]

America is a free country where you can build whatever you want -- but not anywhere. That's why we have zoning laws. No liquor store near a school, no strip malls where they offend local sensibilities, and, if your house doesn't meet community architectural codes, you cannot build at all.

These restrictions are for reasons of aesthetics. Others are for more profound reasons of common decency and respect for the sacred. No commercial tower over Gettysburg, no convent at Auschwitz -- and no mosque at Ground Zero...

Not only is Obama advocating sacrilege at Ground Zero. He is advocating Islamic supremacism under the guise of religious freedom.

I don't for a moment believe that Obama doesn't know what he's doing. He's been "reaching out" to Moslems since the moment he took office. From this year's sycophantic official White House statement about Ramadan:

These rituals remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings. Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity and racial equality. And here in the United States, Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America and that American Muslims have made extraordinary contributions to our country.

[...]

May God’s peace be upon you.

Since when has Islam "always been part of America"? Were Moslems at Jamestown or aboard the Mayflower? As Dr. Paul Williams recently stated in one of his essays:

Sorry, Mr. Obama, but there were no Muslims among the passengers on the Mayflower or the settlers at Jamestown. Muslims were conspicuously absent from the ranks of George Washington’s Army of the Revolution and played no role in the creation of the American republic – - save for the fact that the new country’s first declaration of war was against the forces of Islam in the form of the Barbary pirates.

Read the entire essay HERE.

Furthermore, that closing sentence from this year's White House statement on Ramadan is very close to ṣalawāt:

a phrase that practising Muslims often say after saying (or hearing) the name of a prophet of Islam.

Caliphate-yearning and shari'a-desirous Muslims have stated in the past that they're going to use America's freedoms to take down our nation. And I have to hand it to them: they're strategy is succeeding, with even the President of the United States as one of their means of doing so.

I ask you this: Two years ago, could you even have imagined that anyone would support building a mosque to overlook the sacred soil of Ground Zero?

I also ask you this: Can you this day imagine that the mosque won't be built, never mind the outcries against doing so?

Dhimmitude and political correctness have overtaken America. How far we have fallen!

Note to readers: My next post, whenever I can get to it, will delineate the true meaning of Ramadan.

Krauthammer Excoriates Obama

Krauthammer Slams Obama's View of America

H/T: Pat Dollard

Obama Denigrates Israel

Hat Tip: Gateway Pundit



H/T Yid with Lid