Obama's rejection of the rule of law (ways president has ignored his chief duty)

WND ^ | July 10, 2013 | Andrew Napolitano

[Perseverando]

Fidelity to the rule of law is the centerpiece of a free society. It means that no one is beneath the protection of the law and no one is absolved of the obligation to comply with it. The government may not make a person or a class of persons exempt from constitutional protections, as it did during slavery, nor may it make government officials exempt from complying with the law, as it does today.

Everyone who works for the government in the United States takes an oath to uphold the Constitution and the laws written pursuant to it. In our system of government, we expect that Congress will write the laws, the courts will interpret them and the president will enforce them. Indeed, the Constitution states that it is the president’s affirmative duty to enforce the law. That duty is not an abstract formulation. Rather, it means the president cannot decline to enforce laws with which he disagrees or whose enforcement might cause him or his political allies to lose popularity. It also means the president cannot make up his own version of the law as a substitute for what the Constitution commands or Congress has written.

In the modern era, presidents have rejected the value of the rule of law and instead followed their own political interests. President George W. Bush, for example, while signing into law a federal statute prohibiting the government from reading your mail without a search warrant, boasted that he had no intention of enforcing that law – and we know that he famously did not enforce it.

But no modern president has picked and chosen which laws to enforce and which to ignore and which to rewrite to the extremes of President Obama. His radical rejection of the rule of law, which presents a

[Mastador1]

Laws, Obama don’t need no stinkin laws, dicktators make laws they don’t follow them!

[laplata]

Obama is moving into the same league as Hitler and Stalin and if he isn’t stopped, he will become their equal.

[Mastador1]

Equal Hell, Obama is going for the record.

[laplata]

For sure. He could make Stalin and Hitler look like Boy Scouts. He’s as evil as anyone who has ever lived on this planet.

[yadent]

I’m beginning to get the hang of this. Laws are just general guidelines, nothing ‘hard and fast’.......

[nathanbedford]

One can imagine Thomas Jefferson writing this bill of particulars against Barack Obama as he did against George III

[Bullish]

Silly Rabbit, those laws were only meant to inhibit a Republican from disobeying the Constitution, not a black, communist democrat.

[BlueYonder]

Better watch out, Zero, two can play this game.

When BlueYonder is president, he will selectively zero out spending on the departments of energy, commerce and education. He will eliminate subsidies to Planned Abortionhoods. He will cut till it hurts, then begun the serious reductions. He will dare the institutionally inept Congress and courts to do anything about it.

Who knew that presidents could on their own volition enact the equivalent of the line item veto just by ignoring the law, even ones they sign into law? When BlueYonder takes office, it will be a good time to go short on federal government futures.