Friends, After hearing the presidential address tonight, we all have to attempt to put partisan leanings aside and we must ask ourselves what type of country we want to hand over to our children. Although the Presidents speech addressed immigration, the real questions we need addressed are the role of law, order, the limits of government power, and the role of our Constitution. If, as the President claimed, the President of the United States can ignore whatever laws he disagrees with through prosecutorial discretion, then what are the defining limits of his power? When I was a federal agent we frequently encountered prosecutorial discretion and I find it difficult to believe that the President does not understand what the term means. With the limited resources of the United States Attorneys Office, I was often turned away from prosecuting suspects I was investigating through the federal criminal-justice system because the gravity of the crime was not serious enough to use those scarce, federal, prosecutorial assets. Many times we then asked the local police departments for help in the investigation and they frequently obliged. I also encountered a milder form of prosecutorial discretion when I was a young police officer with the NYPD in Brooklyn, New York. We were not forced to issue a speeding ticket to every driver stopped for speeding as we were given the latitude to issue warnings. Yet, this is not what the President is about to do. This is not what any US President has ever done. President Obama is not ordering scarce federal law enforcement assets to prioritize certain cases of immigration law violations, or to issue warnings in certain cases, he is ordering our tax-payer-funded federal law enforcement agents to completely ignore immigration law for millions of people which the President has never met. Its the equivalent of a police supervisor telling his officers to ignore speeding violations entirely on specific roads, at his discretion. Also, if this is allowed, what recourse do you have if your streets become more dangerous because you live on one of those streets where speeding laws are not enforced? If the President can do this, then are we a country of laws, or just laws of convenience where convenience is only determined by those holding the stick of power. If your response to the presidential address is to avoid the difficult questions posed by it and to default to easy political responses such as Bush did it or Reagan did it, without any deeper consideration of what the it they did was, then we are rapidly approaching the point of no return. Even a cursory review of historical Executive Orders on immigration would clearly demonstrate that tonights Executive Order is an unprecedented grasp for power. Remember history teaches us that the evaporation of personal liberty, as the power of government grows, has always been accompanied and aided by groups of people who blindly swear allegiance to political labels, rather than political ideas, in the short-term lust for power. What has always made the United States different is our institutions, the unbiased application of the rule of law, and legal recourse for those who have had their civil liberties violated. When that legal system breaks down, our institutions are used for political, rather than public-service functions, and entire categories of law are subjected to the discretion and whims of power-hungry government officials, then it is only a matter of time before you find yourself, regardless of your political affiliation, living on that dangerous street where speeding cars lawlessly endanger your children. -Dan
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 01:19:16 +0000
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