Who Makes The Laws, Anyway?

by Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON -- Last week, a draft memo surfaced from the Homeland Security Department suggesting ways to administratively circumvent existing law to allow several categories of illegal immigrants to avoid deportation and, indeed, for some to be granted permanent residency.

Most disturbing was the stated rationale. This was being proposed "in the absence of Comprehensive Immigration Reform." In other words, because Congress refuses to do what these bureaucrats would like to see done, they will legislate it themselves.

Regardless of your feelings on the substance of the immigration issue, this is not how a constitutional democracy should operate. Administrators administer the law, they don't change it. That's the legislators' job.

When questioned, the White House downplayed the toxic memo, leaving the impression that it was nothing more than ruminations emanating from the bowels of Homeland Security. But the administration is engaged in an even more significant power play elsewhere.

A 2007 Supreme Court ruling gave the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate carbon emissions if it could demonstrate that they threaten human health and the environment. The Obama EPA made precisely that finding, thereby granting itself a huge expansion of power and, noted The Washington Post, sending "a message to Congress."

It was not a terribly subtle message: Enact cap-and-trade legislation -- taxing and heavily regulating carbon-based energy -- or the EPA will do so unilaterally. As Frank O'Donnell of Clean Air Watch noted, such a finding "is likely to help light a fire under Congress to get moving."

Well, Congress didn't. Despite the "regulatory cudgel" (to again quote the Post) the administration has been waving, the Senate has repeatedly refused to acquiesce.

Good for the Senate. But what to do when the executive is passively aggressive rather than actively so? Take border security. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., reports that President Obama told him about pressure from his political left and its concern that if the border is secured, Republicans will have no incentive to support comprehensive reform (i.e., amnesty). Indeed, Homeland Security's abandonment of the "virtual fence" on the southern border, combined with its lack of interest in completing the real fence that today covers only one-third of the border, gives the distinct impression that serious border enforcement is not a high administration priority absent some Republican quid pro quo on comprehensive reform.

But border enforcement is not something to be manipulated in return for legislative favors. It is, as the administration vociferously argued in court in the Arizona case, the federal executive’s constitutional responsibility. Its job is to faithfully execute the laws. Non-execution is a dereliction of duty.

This contagion of executive willfulness is not confined to the federal government or to Democrats. In Virginia, the Republican attorney general has just issued a ruling allowing police to ask about one's immigration status when stopped for some other reason (e.g., a traffic violation). Heretofore, police could inquire only upon arrest and imprisonment.

Whatever your views about the result, the process is suspect. If police latitude regarding the interrogation of possible illegal immigrants is to be expanded, that's an issue for the legislature, not the executive.

How did we get here? I blame Henry Paulson. (Such a versatile sentence.) The gold standard of executive overreach was achieved the day he summoned the heads of the country's nine largest banks and informed them that henceforth the federal government was their business partner. The banks were under no legal obligation to obey. But they know the capacity of the federal government, when crossed, to cause you trouble, endless trouble. They complied.

So did BP when the president summoned its top executives to the White House to demand a $20 billion federally administered escrow fund for damages. Existing law capped damages at $75 million. BP, like the banks, understood the power of the U.S. government. Twenty billion it was.

Again, you can be pleased with the result (I was), and still be troubled by how we got there. Everyone wants energy in the executive (as Alexander Hamilton called it). But not lawlessness. In the modern welfare state, government has the power to regulate your life. That's bad enough. But at least there is one restraint on this bloated power: the separation of powers. Such constraints on your life must first be approved by both houses of Congress.

That's called the consent of the governed. The constitutional order is meant to subject you to the will of the people's representatives, not to the whim of a chief executive or the imagination of a loophole-seeking bureaucrat.

Mr. Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist.

Stop the NEW Real ID - S.1261 - The PASS Act (Video)

U.S.A. Patriot Alert:

Another power grab attempt to make U.S.A. citizens slaves. Guidelines established by a United Nations sanctioned international-one world government cabal - utilizing BIOMETRIC "Big Brother" technology to scan yourself and spy on your every move!

Homeland Security Secretary; Janet N. - is pushing this 1st, 4th and 10th Amendment VIOLATION in a Senate subcommittee as we speak. It is a repeal/embellishment/add-on to the bogus Real ID Act - that at least 20 States across the U.S.A. are rebelling against currently!

Call your U.S.A. Senators and Congresspersons to stop this anti-Constitutional Republic, anti-Liberty, anti-Privacy, anti-USA Sovereignty, anti-God and dangerous slave-like legislation dead in its evil tracks today!

Are You on the President’s Enemies List?

by Gary Bauer
Posted on Human Events 04/17/2009

Last week, Barack Obama’s message to the world was: “the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam.” This week, Barack Obama’s Department of Homeland Security’s message to conservatives was: the United States may soon be at war with you.

According to a new report emanating from DHS, it’s no longer Islamic terrorism — or “man-caused terrorism” in the new DHS parlance — that we have to fear most, but small government, anti-tax, pro-life, pro-gun, anti-illegal immigration, pro-military conservatives. In other words, most of the country.

The DHS report’s title is, “Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” That’s a mouthful. Right-wing. Extremism. Fueling. Resurgence. Radicalization. The threat is made out to be so sinister and so imminent — it’s enough to make you want to jump into bed and pull the covers over your head.

The report warns of potential terrorist acts from “groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority” as well as “groups and individuals that are dedicated a single-issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”

Particularly galling is the report’s lumping together of racists and Americans who take a conservative stance on issues like marriage and the sanctity of life. The assumption seems to be that racist and pro-life views spring from the same mindset. In truth, though, it’s the abortion industry that disproportionately targets black babies and whose largest member, Planned Parenthood, has overtly racist roots.

Potential domestic terrorists are a big concern of the Obama administration. Actual ones aren’t. A year ago Barack Obama and his allies were pooh-poohing his relationship with unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers. Obama brushed off the controversy surrounding Ayers, trying to portray him as just a “guy who lives in my neighborhood,” even though he was co-founder of the violent radical leftwing organization the Weather Underground, which conducted a campaign of bombing public buildings, resulting in real deaths.

The report was issued by the Office of Intelligence and Analysis within DHS. With a name like that you’d think the report would include some data, evidence, references — something. But it has very little of any of that. It’s full of abstractions, speculation and out-dated anecdotes of isolated acts of violence. As the report states, DHS has no “specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence.”

We have become accustomed to authoritarian regimes in places like China, Burma and Cuba being so afraid of their own people that they see the greatest threat to national security as coming from within. It’s alarming to see inklings of that same mindset from America’s leaders.

If the Department of Homeland Security is serious about cracking down on organized violence, it should look to the Left. The vast majority of instances of political violence occurring over the last decade or so have been committed by leftwing groups.

DHS would do well to investigate the anarchists and communists who stormed the streets of Minneapolis-St. Paul during last year’s Republican National Convention, or the radical animal rights groups that bomb medical labs and threaten university researchers with violence. And it should not forget about the homosexual activists who attacked churches after voters passed Proposition 8 to defend traditional marriage in California.

The report’s most offensive intimation is that our heroes returning from the battlefield are susceptible to “recruitment and radicalization” by other rightwing extremists if they are “disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war…” Would that the Feds placed as much emphasis on combating Muslim radicalization in American prisons and mosques.

The DHS report is sure to reinforce the beliefs of many on the Left. Chris Matthews recently called pro-life advocates “terrorists,” and Rosie O’Donnell once blurted that “Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America…” For this sort of thinking to become policy for a major executive branch department is outrageous.

Obama likes to compare himself to Lincoln, FDR and JFK. But so far he more closely resembles Richard Nixon in one important way. Nixon had his “Enemies List,” whose purpose was to determine, as Nixon White House Counsel John Dean described it bluntly, “how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.”

Like Nixon, Obama has signaled that he will not let opposition to his agenda go unpunished. For Rush and conservative talk radio, there’s the Fairness Doctrine. For gun owners and small government enthusiasts, it’s a DHS official knocking at your door.

Whatever happened to the Obama who claimed during the campaign that he wanted to bring us all together? Nixon never claimed to be a unifier; Obama’s election depended on the idea that he was one.

By issuing this report, DHS betrays an understanding of how radical Obama’s policies are — so radical that they might set off a violent response from disgruntled citizens. But it also betrays an ignorance of the nature of those who fall into the categories described in the report.

Scores of millions of Americans are coming to realize that the country they once knew is quickly being destroyed. Understandably, they are upset and want to take action. But they won’t resort to violence, in part because they know that in a democracy change will come when enough citizens are informed about what’s going on and vote accordingly.

That’s the point of the Tea Parties. Nobody believes Obama or his allies will be much swayed by the outpouring of concern and anger evident at these rallies. But the rallies do help to educate the public about how radical Obama’s agenda is. And they help conservatives blow off a little steam and unite in solidarity around a common cause. What’s so threatening about that?