A new prison scheme could enable him to close Gitmo.
If Obama had to run on the things he wants to do, he could not win [re-election]. Shrewdly, he has tried to take them off the table, figuring that Republicans are too inept and timid to make them into campaign issues…Even if he loses, Obama will have ten weeks as president to make a great deal of mischief…
Andrew C. McCarthy
National Review Online
7/18/2012
Mona Charen had a characteristically great column Tuesday about President Obama’s illegal welfare policy. The president purports to be unbound by federal welfare law, which imposes work requirements on welfare recipients. The Washington Times reports that “such activities as motivational reading, housework, weight loss, and journaling” will now qualify for exemption from work requirements.
There is nothing new about this sort of thing. As Mona points out, “It’s old news that Obama has contempt for the rule of law. He’s declined to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed’ on many subjects: immigration, the Defense of Marriage Act, labor laws, and environmental rules, among others.”
To take yet another example, Congressman Steve King of Iowa observes that Obama has serially flouted the federal law that requires the president to submit a plan to address Medicare’s fiscal health if, as long ago happened, the program’s trustee issues an insolvency warning. The president does not even deem himself obliged to follow the health-care law he famously championed, imperiously issuing numerous “waivers” to excuse non-compliance. He asserts executive privilege frivolously to stonewall Congress’s investigation of his Justice Department’s Fast and Furious program. In addition, he flouts the Constitution’s requirement that Congress actually be in recess before a president can make recess appointments.
I could go on, but you get the point. Now, the Constitution provides Congress with powers to rein in a lawless president. Congress can cut off funding to the executive branch. It can impeach if the lawlessness is serious enough…
…President Obama has sized up Capitol Hill and knows full well that he is not going to be reined in. The welfare-law “waivers” are only the latest result. Unless you are dealing with a person who feels a moral obligation to conduct himself lawfully, the rule of law obtains only when it is demonstrated that lawlessness will not be tolerated. That is not the case here.
This is worth considering for a wide variety of reasons. The one I want to focus on at the moment is the jail in Thomson, Ill…Thomson would let him kill two birds with one stone…
Read the entire article at National Review Online.
H/T HotAir
Update: Is Obama Ripping Off the Mask?
…In emotional terms, Obama and Warren are “leaking” their real feelings while trying to cover them up. Popular narcissists can be devastatingly nice and charming, until they run into opposition. Then their real feelings leak out.
In his heart of hearts, President O is always enraged at the American people — those bitter clingers — but this time it’s personal. Gone is the smiling messiah, and in his place we see a persecutory personality, a real witch-hunter who may lose the election but won’t pass up a chance to scourge this country with the whip of righteousness, to tell us what he really thinks. Under the smiling mask, Obama is Rev. Jerry Wright.
By Labor Day, when all the football fans and SUV moms take their eyes of the TV, they will see it, too.
If Obama doesn’t hammer his rage and anger home to the voters, Romney should do it for him. This is self-destructive strategy. You don’t end a campaign by ranting at the voters.
Obama is not a conventional politician. For sure, he loves the trappings, Air Force One, the chance to finally lord it over other people. But Obama is dyed-in-the-wool ideologue. In the last four years he’s changed everything except his deeply embedded beliefs. America is still the real enemy…
