It has been well established under the Constitution and throughout our
history that the president's job as the chief federal law enforcement
officer permits him to put his ideological stamp on the nature of the
work done by the executive branch. The courts have characterized this
stamp as "discretion."
Thus when exercising their discretion, some presidents veer toward
authority, others toward freedom. John Adams prosecuted a congressman
whose criticism brought him into disrepute, an act protected by the
First Amendment yet punishable under the Alien and Sedition Acts, and
Thomas Jefferson declined to enforce the Acts because they punished
speech, and pardoned all those convicted. Jimmy Carter asserted vast
federal regulatory authority over the trucking and airline industries,
and Ronald Reagan undid nearly all of it.
The president has discretion to adapt law enforcement to the needs of
the times and to his reading of the wishes of the American people. Yet
that discretion has a serious and mandatory guiding light -- namely,
that the president will do so faithfully.
The word "faithfully" appears in the oath of office that is
administered to every president. The reason for its use is to assure
Americans that their wishes for government behavior, as manifested in
written law, would be carried out even if the president personally
disagrees with the laws he swore to enforce.
This has not always worked as planned. President George W. Bush once
famously signed into law a statute prohibiting federal agents without a
search warrant from reading mail sent to persons other than themselves
-- and as he was literally holding his pen, he stated he had no
intention of enforcing it. That was a rejection of his presidential
duties and a violation of his oath.
But today, President Obama has taken the concept of discretion and so
distorted it, and has taken the obligation of faithful enforcement and
so rejected it, that his job as chief law enforcer has become one of
incompetent madness or chief lawbreaker. Time after time, in areas as
disparate as civil liberties, immigration, foreign affairs and health
care, the president has demonstrated a propensity for rejecting his oath
and doing damage to our fabric of liberty that cannot easily be undone
by a successor.
Item: He has permitted unconstitutional and unbridled spying on all
Americans all the time, and he has dispatched his agents to lie and
mislead the American people and their elected representatives in
Congress about it. This has resulted in a federal culture in which the
supposed servants of the people have become our permanent and intimate
monitors and squealers on what they observe.
Item: He has permitted illegal immigrants to remain here and continue
to break the law, and he has instructed them on how to get away with it.
His encouragement has resulted in the flood of tens of thousands of
foreign unaccompanied children being pushed across our borders. This has
resulted in culture shock to children now used as political pawns, the
impairment of their lives and the imposition of grievous financial
burdens upon local and state governments.
Item: His agents fomented a revolution in Libya that resulted in the
murder of that country's leader, the killing of the U.S. ambassador and
the evacuation of the U.S. embassy. His agents fomented a revolution in
Ukraine that resulted in a Russian invasion, an active insurgency, sham
elections and the killing of hundreds of innocent passengers flying on a
commercial airliner.
Item: He has dispatched CIA agents to fight undeclared and secret wars
in Yemen and in Pakistan, and he has dispatched unmanned drones to kill
innocents there. He has boasted that some secret reading of public
positive law permits him to kill whomever he wishes, even Americans and
their children.
Item: His State Department has treated Hamas -- a gang of ruthless
murderers whose stated purpose is the destruction of Israel -- as if it
were a legitimate state deserving of diplomatic niceties, and this has
encouraged Hamas to persist in attacking our only serious ally in the
Middle East.
Item: His Department of Veterans Affairs has so neglected patients in
government hospitals that many of them died, and it even destroyed
records to hide its misdeeds. His Internal Revenue Service has enforced
the law more heavily against his political opponents than against his
friends, and it has destroyed government computer records in order to
hide its misdeeds.
Item: He has relieved his friends of the burdens of timely compliance
with Obamacare, and he has burdened his enemies with tortured
interpretations of that law -- even interpretations that were rejected
by the very Congress that enacted the law and interpretations that were
invalidated by the Supreme Court.
He has done all these things with a cool indifference, and he has
threatened to continue to do so until the pressure builds on his
political opponents to see things his way.
The Framers could not have intended a president so devoid of fidelity
to the rule of law that it is nearly impossible to distinguish between
incompetence and lawlessness -- and I am not sure which is worse.
Archbishop Fulton Sheen often said he'd prefer to deal with a smart
devil than a stupid one.
But the Framers did give us a remedy, and the remedy is not a frivolous
lawsuit that the federal courts will no doubt reject as a political
stunt. The remedy is removal from office. This is not to be undertaken
lightly, as was the case when this remedy was last used. But it is the
remaining constitutional means to save the freedoms the Constitution was
intended to guarantee.
The choice is between two more years of government by decree or two
years of prosecution. It is a choice the president has imposed upon us
all.
Jumping
the shark is the term used in show business when any particular series,
movie or television, has gone past the point of no return with
something so inane and ridiculous that people, even their die-hard fans,
simply give up and stop watching.
