“Don’t just start yelling, young ladies,” Mr. Obama said as multiple women stood up to demand that Obama stop deporting people. “I let you holler,” he said as they continued shouting. “You’ve got to listen to me too.” Obama said that the protesters were right about a lot of illegal immigrants getting deported but that he was acting to change it. “What you’re not paying attention to is the fact that I JUST TOOK AN ACTION TO CHANGE THE LAW!” Obama said. Just to be clear, executive action — whether through formal EOs or other kinds of directives — cannot “change the law.” They can only act as guidelines on how to act within the law. Any change to statute has to originate in Congress through passage of a bill, and then signed by the President to take effect. This, in fact, is exactly what Republicans have accused Obama of attempting — a change in statute by executive edict, a move that would be unconstitutional and illegitimate. Anyone who has passed a high-school civics class understands that process and that restriction on power. Nor did this appear to be a simple case of pulling the wrong word. The once-celebrated constitutional scholar actually made the case twice that he had changed the law in response to the heckling. The Hill captured Obama’s continued argument, emphases mine: “You have been deporting families,” a heckler yelled. The president urged the demonstrator to stop shouting before he fired back. “What you’re not paying attention to is the fact that I just took an action to change the law, so that’s point No. 1,” Obama said, his words echoing to 1,000 attendees. “Point No. 2, the way the change in the law works is that we’re reprioritizing how we enforce our immigration laws generally.” So yes, Obama thinks he’s changed the law, which is something EOs and executive actions cannot legally do. There has been no change in the law at all; Obama’s simply violating it. He’s not exactly being discreet about it, either. One might think that a constitutional law scholar would realize that this isn’t the smartest PR in the world for his unprecedented unilateral action, but apparently Obama is less worried about discretion than he is about getting cheered at rallies. Some things never change. hotair/archives/2014/11/26/obama-i-just-took-an-action-to-change-the-law/
Posted on: Sat, 29 Nov 2014 10:10:33 +0000
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