Lawlessness in Washington

As a continuing student of government, I’ve read extensively on first principles including the federalist papers to understand what’s “constitutionalism.” It’s simply following the intent of the founding fathers. Though I have an understanding of this issue from an historical perspective, I’ve also read books by renowned authors to inch closer to clarity.

Nowhere in political literature did I find that the president could willfully violate any and all provisions of the Constitution. Yet, President Obama seems to be having a field day violating the proper limits of executive power that has become breathtaking.

Said Charles Krauthammer, author and national columnist: “We’ve now reached a point where a flailing president, desperate to deflect the opprobrium—disgrace from shameful conduct—heaped upon him for the false promise that you could keep your health plan if you wanted to, calls a hasty news conference urging both insurers and the states to reinstate millions of such plans.

“Except that he is asking them to break the law. His own law. Under Obamacare, no insurer may issue a policy after 2013 that does not meet the law’s minimum coverage requirements. These plans were canceled because they do not.

“The law remains unchanged. The regulations governing that law remain unchanged. Nothing is changed except for a president proposing to unilaterally change his own law from the White House pressroom. “That’s banana republic stuff, except that there the dictator proclaims from the presidential balcony.”

WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan had this to say about Obama: “The president’s problem right now is that people think he’s smart. They think he’s in command, aware of pitfalls and complexities. That’s his reputation: He’s risen far on his brains. They think he is sophisticated. That is his problem in the health insurance debacle.

“It’s a shock for most people that it’s a shambles. A fellow very friendly to the administration, a longtime supporter, cornered me at a holiday party recently to ask, with true perplexity: “The questioner had been the manager of a great institution, a high stakes 24/7 operations with a lot of moving parts. He knew Murphy’s Law—if it can go wrong, it will. Managers—presidents—have to obsess, have to put the fear of God, as Mr. Obama says, into those below them in the line of authority. They don’t have to get down in the weeds every day but they have to know there are weeds, and that things get caught in them.

“And this president wasn’t. I think part of the reason he wasn’t careful is because he sort of lives in words. That’s been his whole professional life—books, speeches. Say something and it magically exists as something said, and if it’s been said and publicized it must be real. He never had to push a lever, see the machine not respond, puzzle it out and fix it. It’s all been pretty abstract for him, not concrete. He never had to stock a store, run a sale and see lots of people come but the expenses turn out to be larger than you’d expected and the profits smaller, and you have to figure out what went wrong and do better next time.

“People say Mr. Obama never had to run anything, but it may be more important that he never worked for the guy who had to run something, and things got fouled up along the way and he had to turn it around. He never had to meet a payroll, never knew that stress.

“He probably never had to buy insurance! And you know his policies were probably gold-plated—at the law firm, through his wife’s considerable hospital job, in the Illinois Legislature, in the U.S. Senate. Those guys know how to take care of themselves! Maybe he felt guilty. Maybe that’s to his credit, knowing he was lucky. Too bad he didn’t know what he didn’t know, like how every part has to work for a complicated machine to work.”

It seems everything that Mr. O spouts is but farcical! He can’t place a finger on who to blame lest he indicts himself.

Our country enjoys exceptional status as a “nation of immigrants,” though derailed by the demands of globalization making both migration and terrorism much easier.

The biggest challenge facing Congress is “distinguishing illusory immigration problems from real problems,” according to Drs. Tim Kane and Kirk A. Johnson of the Heritage Foundation. But the policy of benign neglect in recent years can no longer be treated with mediocrity. Both chambers would have to deal with the dire need to craft a comprehensive law over the next year.

Some 11 million illegal immigrants are in the country today. The number is a powerful testament to the attractiveness of our country for jobs and freedom. We can’t simply dismiss the positive contributions of immigrants for they boost the national output, enhance specialization, and provide a net of economic benefit. But fiscal hawks argue immigrants get more from entitlement programs than what they pay in taxes. Moreover, some 47 million Americans are in the same boat.

“The increase in the immigration flow has corresponded with steady and substantial reductions in unemployment from 7.3 percent to 5.1 percent over the past two decades,” a study noted. “And the unemployment rates have fallen by 6 percentage points for blacks and 3.5 percentage points for Latinos. But all must enter the country legally and participate in an ID and guest worker program.”

Our dissenting views on immigration may be viewed as racist but like a judge who hailed from Romania strongly espousing the essence of our country, both fall under the umbrella of the “American experience.” Time heals all wounds and when the dust settles, we’d all be relishing specific experiences that brought us together in unity as Americans.