Concerns Raised Over Biden's 'Autopen' Presidency

Many documents requiring the signature of His Fraudulency Joe Biden just may not be legal. Many were found to have been signed by an autopen.

These include "signed" executive orders, legislation and pardons. An investigation by the Justice Department is being called for.

According to Newsmax:

The use of an autopen signature on many official White House documents and executive orders purportedly signed by former President Joe Biden has stoked concerns about his awareness of signing certain things and whether he actually signed them at all, according to an investigation by the Oversight Project, an arm of the Heritage Foundation.

According to the group, "every document we could find" that bore Biden's signature all "used the same autopen signature" except for his announcement about leaving the 2024 presidential race last July.

"Whoever controlled the autopen controlled the presidency," the Oversight Project said in a post to X on Thursday.

The concerns are such that Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is demanding a Department of Justice investigation as to whether "Biden's cognitive decline allowed unelected staff to push through radical policy without his knowing approval."

In a letter to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz dated March 4, Bailey wrote that "it appears staffers and officers in the Biden administration may have exploited Biden's incapacity so they could issue orders without an accountable President of sound mind approving them."

To read more, go here. 

NO! To Mail-In Voting

The Democrats are hell-bent on having universal mail-in balloting during the November elections. This does not come as any surprise since they are the party of election fraud.

Some states are sending ballots out helter skelter with virtually no controls. This will lead to mass voter fraud. And it has already happened.

Liberal media outlets and their so-called "fact-check" websites are trying to discount mail-in voting fraud. But the evidence is there for all to see.

From the Heritage Foundation:

Even during the coronavirus pandemic that has so disrupted our lives, it would be a mistake to go to an all-mail election. Concerns that Trump has raised about mail-in voting are based on documented problems we have seen with such voting. 

Mail-in ballots are the ballots most vulnerable to being altered, stolen, or forged. Just look at the current investigation going on in Paterson, New Jersey, over a recent municipal election conducted entirely by mail. 

Four Paterson residents have already been charged with criminal election fraud, including a councilman and councilman-elect. Evidence is surfacing of everything from voters reporting that they never received their absentee ballots (even though they are recorded as having voted) to accusations that one of the campaigns may have submitted fraudulent ballots. 

Mail-in ballots also have a higher rejection rate than votes cast in person. In the Paterson case, election officials apparently rejected 1 in 5 ballots for everything from signatures on the ballots not matching the signatures of voters on file, to ballots not complying with the technical rules that apply to absentee ballots. 

New York, which has taken more than a month to count the ballots from its June 23 primary election, is also reporting a similar rejection rate. This should be considered unacceptable by anyone believing in fair and accurate elections.

During his press conference the other day, President Donald Trump stated that he does not object to people voting via absentee ballots, but not by universal mail-in ballots. That is why he is refusing to approve funds to cover mail-in balloting. If there's no funds, there's no mail-in balloting to process.

That's the issue.

If one wonders the difference between absentee ballots and the mail-in ballots the Democrats want, Rush Limbaugh last week described the two:

We'd be foolish to allow universal mail-in voting!

History Quiz: The Gadsden Flag

Are you familiar with the Gadsden Flag?

If you aren't, or you think you are, you should test your knowledge with a quiz that has been posted by The Heritage Foundation.

I fly the Gadsden Flag on The Beast's flagpole (I got it from The Heritage Foundation):

Above, The Beast at the Lava Hot Springs/City Center KOA. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

To take the quiz, go here.

A Little Trek To Camping World

Above, Camping World today. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Since today is the Fourth of July and most people are off somewhere or still at home, the traffic was relatively light (for Los Angeles) today. So I decided to head up to Valencia to Camping World (23 miles each way) to see if they had a Flagpole Buddy Kit in stock and for something to do. It is a nice drive up Interstate 5 and the freeway goes through some hills. So it is a little like being out in the country.

Above, Camping World's giant flag can be seen from both directions on I-5. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

The Flagpole Buddy Kit is usually around $160, but it is on sale at about $60 off. It mounts onto a RVs roof ladder and it telescopes up to 22' in length.

Unfortunately, Camping World was out of them, but they offered to give me a "rain check" on one. I decided instead to order it online, which I did.

Above, Camping World's RV sales lot. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Although the kit I comes with a 3' x 5' US flag, I plan to fly the Gadsden flag I got from The Heritage Foundation instead. Or, I can fly both as the Flagpole Buddy Kit has attachments for two flags.

Above, the Gadsden Flag.

I'll install it when it arrives (in about 5 days).

In Today's Mail...

This is what one gets (I suppose) when a donation is made to The Heritage Foundation:

Got A Gadsden Flag

Above, the Gadsden flag after opening the package. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

For making a donation to The Heritage Foundation, I received today my own Gadsden flag from them.

What's the Gadsden flag?

According to Wikipedia:

The Gadsden flag is a historical American flag with a yellow field depicting a rattlesnake coiled and ready to strike. Positioned below the rattlesnake are the words "DONT TREAD ON ME". The flag is named after American general and politician Christopher Gadsden (1724–1805), who designed it in 1775 during the American Revolution. It was used by the Continental Marines as an early motto flag, along with the Moultrie flag. 

Modern uses of the Gadsden flag include political movements such as libertarianism and the American Tea Party as well as American soccer supporter groups, including Sam's Army and the American Outlaws since the late 1980s.

I will likely keep the flag with The Beast. I will see about getting a flagpole for it.

For more on The Heritage Foundation, go here.

End of Days: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy

Although I am an unabashed and unapologetic conservative, I am also an American history buff. One of the things that has interested me over the years is the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I remember that day as I was under three months away from turning ten years old. I even visited Dealey Plaza in 1984.

There is a new book of like-minded people who are interested in the events of November 1963.

The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation has posted an article on a new book by James Swanson, End of Days: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Above, the sniper's position at the open window.  Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Swanson is the author of the excellent book chronicling the 12-day manhunt for President Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth, Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer. I recently read Manhunt and finished it in one night, it is that spellbinding.

Swanson is a legal scholar at The Heritage Foundation and his book on the JFK assassination is broken down into second-by-second accounts. He also includes Jacqueline Kennedy's side of the story, which was largely ignored and disregarded in previous accounts.

If End of Days is anywhere as good as Manhunt, this should prove to be a great read.

To read The Foundry article (which also includes a video), go here.

Farm Bill, Reforms Needed Before Passage

The Heritage Foundation has come up with reforms needed on the current farm bill. The current bill was rejected by the House of Representatives.

One of the reforms suggested was to split the farm bill into two: one for farm programs and the other for the food stamp (SNAP) program.

That is definitely one reform that I can support.

To read more, go here.

Taxmageddon 2013: Kiss Half of Your Paycheck Goodbye!

The government (federal, state and payroll taxes) is poised to take nearly half (in some states, over half) of your paycheck starting January 1, 2013.

The Heritage Foundation has posted the tax table for all states and the percentages of what you can expect to be taken from your paycheck:

For more, go here.

Tackling The Medicare Issue Head-on

As the Democrats demagogue the issue of Medicare, there's a couple of things to keep in mind:

Source: The Heritage Foundation

Quick quiz: Who said this about Medicare? "With an aging population and rising health care costs, we are spending too fast to sustain the program. And if we don't gradually reform the system while protecting current beneficiaries, it won't be there when future retirees need it. We have to reform Medicare to strengthen it." 

It wasn't Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI), Mitt Romney's new running mate, who has been vocal about the need for Medicare reform. It was President Barack Obama, just last year. 

As the debate reignites over the government's health care plan for seniors, which has a long-term unfunded liability of nearly $37 trillion, two things are important to remember: 

1. Obamacare has already "ended Medicare as we know it." 

2. There is bipartisan consensus for moving Medicare toward a premium support model, meaning that the government would make a fixed contribution toward each enrollee's plan, but the enrollee would have the freedom to choose which health care plan he or she wants.

To read more, go here.

Heritage Foundation: The Imperial Presidency

From The Heritage Foundation:

The United States was born when rebellious colonists declared their independence from an imperial ruler who had vastly overstepped his bounds. "The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States," they wrote in their Declaration of Independence.

Today's presidency lacks the regal air of George III. But imperialism is back, in a big way.

Last week, the Obama Administration's Department of Homeland Security issued a memorandum instructing U.S. immigration officials to use their "prosecutorial discretion" to create a policy scheme contrary to existing law, designed to implement legislation that Congress hasn't passed.

The President himself has admitted he doesn't have the authority to do this. "The idea of doing things on my own is very tempting, I promise you, not just on immigration reform. But that's not how our system works," he told Hispanic activists last year. "That's not how our democracy functions."

Indeed.

We can now see before us a persistent pattern of disregard for the powers of the legislative branch in favor of administrative decision-making without—and often in spite of—congressional action.  This violates the spirit—and potentially the letter—of the Constitution's separation of the legislative and executive powers of Congress and the President.

Examples abound:

• Even though the Democrat-controlled Senate rejected the President's cap-and-trade plan, his Environmental Protection Agency classified carbon dioxide, the compound that sustains vegetative life, as a pollutant so that it could regulate it under the Clean Air Act.
  
• After the Employee Free Choice Act—designed to bolster labor unions' dwindling membership rolls—was defeated by Congress, the National Labor Relations Board announced a rule that would implement "snap elections" for union representation, limiting employers' abilities to make their case to workers and virtually guaranteeing a higher rate of unionization at the expense of workplace democracy.
  
• After an Internet regulation proposal failed to make it through Congress, the Federal Communications Commission announced that it would regulate the Web anyway, even despite a federal court's ruling that it had no authority to do so.
  
• Although Congress consistently has barred the Department of Education from getting involved in curriculum matters, the Administration has offered waivers for the No Child Left Behind law in exchange for states adopting national education standards, all without congressional authorization.

Likewise, the Administration has often simply refused to enforce laws duly enacted by Congress:

• Since it objects to existing federal immigration laws, the Administration has decided to apply those laws selectively and actively prevent the state (like Arizona) from enforcing those laws themselves.
  
• Rather than push Congress to repeal federal laws against marijuana use, the Department of Justice (DOJ) simply decided it would no longer enforce those laws.
  
• DOJ also has announced that it would stop enforcing the Defense of Marriage Act or defending it from legal challenge rather than seeking legislative recourse.

On Tuesday, the President invoked executive privilege to avoid handing over some 1,300 documents in an ongoing Congressional investigation.  The Supreme Court has held that executive privilege cannot be invoked to shield wrongdoing.  Is that what's happening in this case? "Congress needs to get to the bottom of that question to prevent an illegal invocation of executive privilege and further abuses of power. That will require an index of the withheld documents and an explanation of why each of them is covered by executive privilege—and more," Heritage legal scholar Todd Gaziano writes.

Earlier this year the President crossed the threshold of constitutionality when he gave "recess appointments" to four officials who were subject to Senate confirmation, even though the Senate wasn't in recess. Gaziano wrote at the time that such appointments "would render the Senate's advice and consent role to normal appointments almost meaningless. It is a grave constitutional wrong."

There is no telling where such disregard may go next, but the trend is clear, and it leads further and further away from the constitutional rule of law.

The President has unique and powerful responsibilities in our constitutional system as chief executive officer, head of state, and commander in chief. Those powers do not include the authority to make laws or to decide which laws to enforce and which to ignore. The President - like judges or Members of Congress - takes an oath to uphold the Constitution in carrying out the responsibilities of his office.

Indeed, the President takes a unique oath, pledging he "shall faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States" and "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." We don't need a new Declaration of Independence, but we do need a President who will defend and vigorously exert his or her legitimate powers, recognizing that those powers are not arbitrary or unlimited.

Dr. Matthew Spalding is the Vice President for American Studies and Director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics at The Heritage Foundation. He is also the author of We Still Hold These Truths.

Heritage Foundation: President Obama's Fast and Furious Scandal Grows

From The Heritage Foundation:

On the night of December 15, 2010, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was shot and killed by an untraceable assault weapon that was deliberately handed to Mexican drug lords by U.S. officials via Operation Fast and Furious. Ever since, the Terry family and Americans across the nation have asked how this could have happened.

And ever since, Attorney General Eric Holder has stonewalled Congress in its attempts to find these answers. Yesterday, President Obama joined this stonewalling effort, asserting executive privilege over many of the documents about the operation that Congress had subpoenaed but still had not received.

Executive privilege is legitimate when properly invoked. But even then, the Supreme Court has maintained that it is not absolute. The Department of Justice (DOJ) must provide a compelling rationale for each assertion. Shielding wrongdoing has never been a qualifying rationale.

Heritage legal expert and former Department of Justice counsel Todd Gaziano explains:

First, the Supreme Court in United States v. Nixon (1974) held that executive privilege cannot be invoked at all if the purpose is to shield wrongdoing. The courts held that [President] Nixon's purported invocation of executive privilege was illegitimate, in part, for that reason. There is reason to suspect that this might be the case in the Fast and Furious cover-up and stonewalling effort. Congress needs to get to the bottom of that question to prevent an illegal invocation of executive privilege and further abuses of power. That will require an index of the withheld documents and an explanation of why each of them is covered by executive privilege—and more.

It is now up to Congress to ascertain the specific reasoning for executive privilege with every withheld document. Even in the unlikely case it is determined that this was a proper invocation of executive privilege, the administration is still not off the hook to inform Congress of what they know.

Gaziano explains further:

[T]he President is required when invoking executive privilege to try to accommodate the other branches' legitimate information needs in some other way. For example, it does not harm executive power for the President to selectively waive executive privilege in most instances, even if it hurts him politically by exposing a terrible policy failure or wrongdoing among his staff. The history of executive–congressional relations is filled with accommodations and waivers of privilege. In contrast to voluntary waivers of privilege, Watergate demonstrates that wrongful invocations of privilege can seriously damage the office of the presidency when Congress and the courts impose new constraints on the President's discretion or power (some rightful and some not).

President Obama now owns the Fast and Furious scandal. It is entirely up to him whether he wants to live up to the transparency promises he made four years ago, or further develop a shroud of secrecy that would make President Richard Nixon blush. If the stonewalling continues, and the privilege is not waived, it will be up to the American people and the media to demand the reasoning for the cover-up.

It is also time for the media to begin responsibly covering this scandal. For more than 16 months, only a handful of reporters have appropriately researched the facts and sought answers. Most members of the national media would not even acknowledge the existence of the scandal. Reportedly, NBC Nightly News ran its first story on the scandal just this past Tuesday.

The national media must now follow the lead of their colleagues CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson or Townhall's Katie Pavlich and investigate the specific facts and details of the operation and administration involvement. Attkisson, as you may remember, was screamed and cussed at by White House spokesman Eric Schultz in October for asking questions about Operation Fast and Furious.

Answers must be demanded. When was the first time President Obama was briefed on this operation? Given his previous conflicting testimony, when in fact did Attorney General Eric Holder become involved? What exactly did he know and when did he know it?

Despite the fact that Mexico was left in the dark by the Obama administration, this was still an international operation. If Secretary of State Hillary Clinton must approve the Keystone pipeline, wouldn't she also be consulted on this cross-border operation?

Liberals will try and pretend this operation that began in mid-2009 is connected to former President George W. Bush's administration. The media should challenge this false assertion. Operation Wide Receiver in 2006 did not remotely resemble Fast and Furious, as National Review's Andrew McCarthy has ably examined. Mexico helped coordinate it, and there was traceable controlled delivery. Even Holder admitted in testimony that you cannot "equate the two."

We will also hear that this is "election-year politics." The problem with that refrain is that this investigation has been ongoing since early 2011, well before campaign season started. It has been Attorney General Holder's evasiveness that has dragged this process closer to Election Day.

If it were not for conservative media outlets, bloggers, a few dogged reporters and the steadfastness of House Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA), this troubling scandal would have been buried long ago.

A brave American border agent is dead. At least 200 Mexicans have been slaughtered with these weapons. Drug violence on the border remains unabated. Now, President Obama is attempting to conceal the facts of what happened. This is an opportunity for Congress and the media to demand sunlight.

Two Centuries of Religious Freedom Rolled Back

The current storm over contraceptives and religious organizations have muddied the waters so much that the average person would have difficulty figuring out what the fuss is all about.

Thankfully, The Heritage Foundation has it layed out in plain English so that even a moron should be able to comprehend what's at stake.

They wrote, in part:

Since 1791, when the Bill of Rights was formally adopted, America has enjoyed the legal protection of religious freedom, enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Today, 221 years later, centuries of progress in the protection of religious and other liberties is at risk of being rolled back in one fell swoop. The culprit: Obamacare.

As we all know, President Obama's health care law will mandate that religious hospitals, charities, and schools abandon the tenets of their faiths and provide their employees insurance coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, contraception and sterilization. This anti-conscience mandate is but the latest assault on liberty Obamacare has ushered in. Its shock waves are reverberating across the country, waking Americans to the fact that our first freedom -- religious liberty -- will be the first to fall now that the federal government has unfettered control over the country's health care system.

Let's make this clear one more time: The issue isn't about birth control -- it's about the federal government's power to force a religious institution like Georgetown University to bend to its will and take actions that are fundamentally at odds with its core values. Religious groups are faced with an untenable choice: violate conscience or drop coverage and face penalties for doing so. That's why so many Americans -- men and women alike -- are speaking out against the anti-conscience mandate and its fine on faith.

To read the full article, go here.

White House Wants to Keep Gas Prices High

There are people who deny that the Obama Administration isn't upset over the high gasoline prices we are currently facing. They are by design.

The Heritage Foundation posted the following:

With the national average of gas prices hitting $3.65 a gallon, nearing $6 in some parts of the country, and poised to head even higher, America’s families are wondering when the bleeding at the pump will stop. But for Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu, those steep prices aren’t even a concern. In fact, he says his goal is not to get the price of gasoline to go down.

Chu delivered those stunning remarks in testimony before Congress yesterday. When Rep. Alan Nunnelee (R-Miss.) asked Chu whether it’s his “overall goal to get our price” of gasoline lower, Chu said, “No, the overall goal is to decrease our dependency on oil, to build and strengthen our economy.”

As shocking as his remarks are, they shouldn’t come as a surprise. Chu has a long record of advocating for higher gas prices. In 2008, he stated, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” Last March, he reiterated his point in an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, noting that his focus is to ease the pain felt by his energy policies by forcing automakers to make more fuel-efficient automobiles. “What I’m doing since I became Secretary of Energy has been quite clear. What I have been doing is developing methods to take the pain out of high gas prices.”

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration is seemingly doing everything it can to make paying for energy even more painful by refusing to open access to the country’s oil and gas reserves and blocking new projects that would lead to the development of more energy in America. Case in point: the president’s decision to say “no” to the Keystone XL pipeline, a project that would have delivered hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil from Canada to Texas refineries, while bringing thousands of jobs along with it.

Keep in mind gasoline prices in Europe are equivalent to $9.00/gallon. If you think this is good and enjoy paying high gas prices, then vote for Obama.

To read the full article (and see a video), go here.

Media Matters Thuggery Exposed In Memo

The Looney Left Report


Media Matters a supposed media watchdog group has targeted Fox News and Newsmax (amongst others) for harassment. All this is in close coordination with the Obama White House.

According to an article in Newsmax.com:

Newsmax and the Fox News Channel are among the conservative media entities targeted by an “opposition research team” formed by the left-wing media watchdog group Media Matters for America.

That eye-opening disclosure came to light in an internal Media Matters memo obtained by The Daily Caller, which lists targets including conservative websites, conservative think tanks, media outlets, and politicians.

A Media Matters memo actually went so far as to call for the hiring of private investigators to look into the private lives of Fox News employees and to harass them at their homes.

In addition to the Fox News Channel and Newsmax, the target list includes The Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, Fox News websites, Fox Business Network, and the American Enterprise Institute.

Also on the list are several News Corp. executives, including Rupert Murdoch; Fox News executives, including CEO Roger Ailes; Fox personalities Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity; conservative donors; and politicians, including John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and Mitch McConnell.

These actions against conservative media outlets may be illegal as Media Matters is a 501(c)3 tax-exempt nonprofit group and partisan political activities are forbidden.

To read the full article, go here.

"The Great Dictator" Obama Issues Edict To Health Insurers

Hoping to quell a firestorm President Obama announced a change in healthcare policy concerning religion and contraceptives.

Fox News reported:

President Barack Obama, in an abrupt policy shift aimed at quelling an election-year firestorm, announced on Friday that religious employers would not be required to offer free birth control to workers and that the onus would instead be put on insurers.

The compromise sought to accommodate religious organizations, such as Catholic hospitals and universities, outraged by a new rule that would have required them to offer free contraceptive coverage.

Instead, the new approach puts the burden on insurance companies, ordering them to provide workers at religious-affiliated institutions with free family planning if they request it, without involving their employer at all, the White House said.

Well, the problem with this is that although Obama shifted gears, this new plan is no more constitutional than the other one. It really is no change. Who do you think pays for the insurance coverage? The employer and the employee. He has no authority to make an insurer or any business pay for free contraceptives by edict. Governing in this manner makes Obama a dictator.

From Heritage.org:

“It’s very chilling and very dangerous,” Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) told the Heritage Foundation in an interview at the Conservative Political Action Conference. He insisted that the president’s supposed walk-back of the contraception mandate “is all rhetoric” and does not address either the constitutional problems with the mandate or its detriments to freedom of choice for America’s health care consumers.

On the constitutional question, Price said that members of the administration “so believe that they have to have the power to determine what kind health coverage that an individual may get that they’re willing to trample on the First Amendment to the Constitution in order to increase their power.”

To read the full Fox News story, go here.

UPDATE (2/11): From CNSNews.com:

CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement late on Friday declaring that the small alteration President Barack Obama had announced earlier in the day to a regulation that would force all health-care plans in the United States to cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives--including those that cause abortion--is 'unacceptable" because, among other things, it does not protect the freedom-of-conscience rights of secular for-profit employers, or secular non-profit employers, or religious insurers, or self-insured religious employers, or individual Americans.

To read the full story, go here.

Catholic Church Declares War On Obamacare

The U.S. Roman Catholic Church has declared war on Obamacare.

From Heritage.org:

It is a rare moment indeed when faith denominations of all stripes unite together in common cause, and it is rarer still when that cause is a political one, with a sole piece of legislation as its principal target. But when that law eviscerates the very foundation of religious liberty in America as protected under the First Amendment, it should not be surprising that Catholics and Jews, charismatic evangelical Christians, and mainline Lutherans alike find common cause in defense of their liberties.

Such is the case with the firestorm of opposition to Obamacare and the Obama Administration’s attack on religious liberty. Under a new Obamacare mandate issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the White House is mandating that many religious employers, with the exception of churches, provide health care coverage for contraception — including abortion-inducing drugs — thereby trampling upon their constitutionally guaranteed free exercise of religion. And it is this mandate that has caused a vehement response in churches and synagogues across the country.

Yesterday, the head of the Catholic League, Bill Donohue, warned that the nation’s 70 million Catholics are ready to go to war with the Administration’s dictates, saying “Never before, unprecedented in American history, for the federal government to line up against the Roman Catholic Church. This is going to be fought out with lawsuits, with court decisions, and, dare I say it, maybe even in the streets.”

Finally, more people are waking up to the fact that Obamacare is not in the best interests of the American people and that it tramples on their constitutional rights.

To read more, go here.

Obama's Arrogant Authoritarianism

Source: The Heritage Foundation

Last week, President Barack Obama took the latest step on his road toward an arrogant, new authoritarianism with four illegal appointments that entirely trampled on the Constitution's requirements. More troubling still, the President chose to shred the Constitution all in the name of serving his Big Labor agenda while killing jobs in the process.

The President's actions once again gave voice to his animating view of governing: doing so is much easier when one isn't constrained by the Constitution and its checks and balances. "We can't wait," the President exclaimed after unilaterally appointing Richard Cordray as director of the newly inaugurated Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). He also appointed three officials to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), two of whom had been nominated less than a month before.

The policy implications of the President's appointments? The CFPB will now have unmitigated authority to issue regulation upon regulation, contributing to the already-crippling red tape that is strangling business in America. And the NLRB will have the power to advance the President's agenda to bolster unions across the country at the expense of job growth in a smarting economy.

For what, exactly, can't the President wait, exactly? Quite simply, constitutional republicanism -- the system of checks and balances integral to American government and political freedom. He grew impatient with the delays that inevitably accompany any legislative action an acted outside the Constitution's mandated process. But the American people should ask, "Is such action really preferable to a deliberative, if slower-moving, constitutional republic?"

The President's appointments last week, troubling as they are, are but the next steps on the road to a despotic form of governance that has come to characterize his Administration -- and all of liberalism in America today -- what authors Fred Siegel and Joel Kotkin termed in City Journal this week Obama's "New Authoritarianism." Frustrated by the unwillingness of the people's representatives to enact his agenda wholesale, Obama has, from early in his Administration, sought to enact a series of proposals through administrative fiat, not the legislative process:

The Democrat-controlled Senate rejected his cap-and-trade plan, so Obama's Environmental Protection Agency classified carbon dioxide, the compound that sustains vegetative life, as a pollutant so that it could regulate it under the Clean Air Act.

After Congress defeated his stealth-amnesty immigration proposal, the DREAM Act, the Department of Homeland Security instructed Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to "adopt enforcement parameters that bring about the same ends as the DREAM Act," as Heritage's Mike Brownfield explained.

When the woefully misnamed Employee Free Choice Act--explicitly designed to bolster labor unions' dwindling membership rolls--was defeated by Congress, the NLRB announced a rule that would implement "snap elections" for union representation, limiting employers' abilities to make their case to workers and virtually guaranteeing a higher rate of unionization at the expense of workplace democracy.

After an innovation-killing Internet regulation proposal failed to make it through Congress, the Federal Communications Commission announced -- on Christmas Eve, no less -- that it would regulate the Web anyway, despite even a federal court's ruling that it had no authority to do so.

In its push for national education standards, the Education Department decided to tie waivers for the No Child Left Behind law to requirements that states adopt those standards, shutting Congress out of the effort.

Rather than push Congress to repeal federal laws against marijuana use, the Department of Justice (DOJ) simply decided it would no longer enforce those laws.

DOJ made a similar move with respect to the Defense of Marriage Act: rather than seeking legislative recourse, DOJ announced it would stop enforcing the law.

While these efforts are all aimed at circumventing the legislative process, none was so brazen as his four illegal appointments. Last week, Obama went one step further: He violated not just the spirit of the Constitution, which vests in Congress the power to make laws, but the letter of the law as well.

The move is "a breathtaking violation of the separation of powers," explain former U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese and Heritage colleague Todd Gaziano, a former attorney in DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel, in a Washington Post column. "[N]ever before has a president purported to make a 'recess' appointment when the Senate is demonstrably not in recess," they note. "That is a constitutional abuse of a high order."

Dr. Matthew Spalding, vice president of American Studies and director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics at The Heritage Foundation, explains that this "new despotism" -- a government where regulations and unilateral actions replace republican governance -- runs entirely counter to the Founders' vision of America:

The greatest political revolution since the American Founding has been the shift of power away from the institutions of constitutional government to an oligarchy of unelected experts. They rule over virtually every aspect of our daily lives, ostensibly in the name of the American people but in actuality by the claimed authority of science, policy expertise, and administrative efficiency.

If this regime becomes the undisputed norm -- accepted not only among the intellectual and political elites, but also by the American people, as the defining characteristic of the modern state -- it could well mark the end of our great experiment in self-government.

President Obama's actions are exactly the kind that the Founders feared and sought to guard against. His illegal appointments usurp power from the American people's duly elected representatives, and the regulations they will promulgate will, undoubtedly, contribute to the unabated growth of the undemocratic administrative state.

Now that the President has crossed the threshold of constitutionality, there really is no telling where he may stop. There is a clear trend here, however, and it leads further and further from the constitutional order. With these illegal appointments, the President has taken to new heights his disdain for the separation of powers. Whether it will stop here depends on Congress -- Will lawmakers of both parties reassert the legislature's constitutional authority and take a stand against Obama's arrogant new authoritarianism?

"The Obamacare Assault On The Rule of Law"

The Heritage Foundation sent out this essay on "The Obamacare Assault On The Rule of Law":

Mere hours after senior federal Judge Roger Vinson, a United States Naval Academy graduate, became the second federal judge to find Obamacare’s Section 1501 (the individual mandate) unconstitutional, an anonymous White House official called in to question Judge Vinson’s entire ruling, telling reporters, "There's something thoroughly odd and unconventional about the analysis." The only thing "odd and unconventional" here is that a White House official felt it imperative to undermine the legitimacy of a coequal branch of government. Unfortunately this incident just fits into a larger pattern of behavior that calls into question just how far this Administration will bend the rule of law to protect President Barack Obama’s signature accomplishment: Obamacare.

According to Heritage legal expert Robert Alt, Judge Vinson’s declaratory judgment binds the parties to the suit, which includes 26 states, the National Federation of Independent Business and the federal government. This means that, absent a court-issued stay, Obamacare cannot be further implemented as it pertains to these 26 states. So the White House now faces a simple choice: Will President Obama abide by a valid decision by a federal district court, or will he unilaterally ignore the rule of law? If the past is any indicator, the rule of law is in for a continued beating.

As former Member of Congress and Heritage Distinguished Fellow Ernest Istook documents, the Obamacare legislation contained unprecedented billions of dollars in advance implementation appropriations. The advance year appropriations were designed to completely bypass Congress’s annual budget process and go far beyond standard spending decisions for the current and following fiscal years. Some of these advance-implementation appropriations stretch 10 years into the future, far beyond President Obama’s term in office.

Then there are the hundreds of waivers reaching millions of Americans that are being granted piecemeal by the Obama Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Just last week, HHS granted 500 new waivers, more than tripling the number of groups exempt from Obamacare. Unions that gave heavily to President Obama’s election efforts accounted for 40 percent of all employees exempted from Obamacare last week. In all, more than 700 entities are now exempt from Obamacare, totaling 2.1 million people. Last night before the Senate voted on party lines against repeal of Obamacare, Senator Jim DeMint (R–SC) explained why this selective enforcement of the law must stop: “Most Americans don’t play these political games. They don’t have lobbyists and PACs, but I think they should all get a waiver too. I think we should name this repeal bill that we will vote on today ‘the great American waiver.’”

Health care is by far not the only arena where the Obama Administration has sacrificed the rule of law for its own political expediency. It has shredded the Constitution’s Appointments Clause to install its favored bureaucrats at regulatory agencies. Then there was the “outrageous and illegal” takeover of Chrysler, the shakedown of BP, the assertion that President Obama can rewrite our nation’s immigration laws simply by not enforcing them, the refusal to enforce anti-voting-fraud laws, and, back to Obamacare, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius threats to silence insurance companies.

One can understand why the White House was so visibly shaken by its federal court Obamacare loss. The 26 states that are party to the Florida suit will account for 266 electoral college votes in the next election. Throw in Virginia’s 13 electoral votes, where another federal court has ruled against Obamacare, and that brings the total to 279, which is more than the 270 needed to elect the next President of the United States.

But political expediency is never an excuse to skirt the rule of law, especially for our nation’s chief law enforcement officer. Congress could help the President make the right decision. In a couple of months, when the current continuing resolution that is funding the federal government runs out, conservatives could attach language to the next spending bill requiring all Obama appointees to abide by Judge Vinson’s decision.

States Suing Against Obamacare

The following states have sued or joined in existing lawsuits against Obamacare:

Source: The Heritage Foundation

State... Lawsuit Joined... Date

Virginia... Virginia... March 23, 2010
Florida... Florida... March 23, 2010
South Carolina... Florida... March 23, 2010
Nebraska... Florida... March 23, 2010
Texas... Florida... March 23, 2010
Utah... Florida... March 23, 2010
Louisiana... Florida... March 23, 2010
Alabama... Florida... March 23, 2010
Michigan... Florida... March 23, 2010
Colorado... Florida... March 23, 2010
Pennsylvania... Florida... March 23, 2010
Washington... Florida... March 23, 2010
Idaho... Florida... March 23, 2010
South Dakota... Florida... March 23, 2010
North Dakota... Florida... April 5, 2010
Arizona... Florida... April 6, 2010
Georgia... Florida... April 13, 2010
Alaska... Florida... April 20, 2010
Nevada... Florida... May 14, 2010
Indiana... Florida... May 14, 2010
Mississippi... Florida... May 14, 2010
Wisconsin... Florida... January 3, 2011
Oklahoma... Oklahoma... January 7, 2011
Wyoming... Florida... January 7, 2011
Ohio... Florida... January 11, 2011
Kansas... Florida... January 12, 2011
Maine... Florida... January 12, 2011

Of course, my state, The People's Republic of California, hasn't joined any of the lawsuits.