What happens if the President simply ignores the law, or refuses to enforce it?President Obama’s announcement that he was unilaterally offering amnesty to youthful illegal immigrants was further confirmation that Obama’s administration is the most lawless in American history.
However, Americans should not really be surprised that Obama took this path. It was, after all, apparently in his political interest to pander to radical sentiment among some Latinos, and it was in Obama’s words “the right thing to do.”Notice there was no mention of “the constitutional thing to do.”
The Framers of the Constitution recognized that “the right thing to do” was a plastic concept, readily molded to fit political expediency. That’s why they created a system of checks and balances to ensure that no individual or cabal could gain absolute power or control the levers of government power without check.
But what happens if the executive -- in this case Barack Obama -- simply ignores the law, or refuses to enforce it?
As I pointed out in “The Law the Governs Government,” the e-pamphlet I wrote with attorney Mark J. Fitzgibbons, for many years the political establishment has shown contempt for the Constitution and rigged the rules to protect and hide its lawbreaking.
From unilaterally granting amnesty to a select group of illegal aliens, to trampling on the religious freedom and freedom of conscience of American Catholics and other Christians, to using unmanned drones to gather information for federal regulatory and law enforcement agencies, to ignoring Congressional subpoenas, to trying to use the FCC to regulate the internet even after a federal court held it had no authority to do so -- this endemic government lawbreaking has gotten progressively worse under Obama.
The list of Obama administration lawbreaking has gotten so long that back in March, nine Republican Attorneys General announced unprecedented plans to sue the Obama administration, alleging some 18 violations of law and the Constitution by President Obama’s administration, appointees and agencies.
Will Congress act, will the federal courts rein-in the executive, or will the people have the ultimate say at the ballot box?
We are about to see.
As Obama’s foray into ignoring the law and granting amnesty to a select group of illegal aliens illustrates, defeating Obama and reclaiming the Constitution as the law that governs government may be the most important goal for conservatives if we are to govern effectively.
In the meantime, principled conservative Attorneys General -- such as Viginia’s Ken Cuccinelli, Tom Horne of Arizona, Pam Bondi of Florida, Sam Olens of Georgia, Bill Schuette of Michigan, Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma, Marty Jackley of South Dakota, Alan Wilson of South Carolina, and Greg Abbott of Texas -- can add another count to their lawsuit.
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