Obama & Constitutional Law

The worrisome thing about President Obama is that he was once a senior lecturer (accounted as a tenured professor) at the University of Chicago Law School and taught regular courses, not a full load since he was involved in other enterprises having to do with government or other activities, perhaps community-organizing. Obama referred to himself as a "constitutional law professor" during his campaign for the presidency.

That’s where the rubber hits the road. Was Obama a professor who was about as bright as a watermelon with regard to the Constitution, or did he then and does he now understand the Constitution and has decided it is too anachronistic or inconvenient to his agenda to be of any importance? Plainly, this is the case. During his campaign, he made it plain that the Constitution was remiss in that it did not allow for the proper redistribution of wealth, for instance.

Redistributing the wealth was the farthest thing from the founders’ minds. They were delivering the nation from a monarchy, which could be aptly be described as the penultimate governing agency in the matter of distributing as well as redistributing the wealth. They quite obviously meant that personal ownership – not serfdom to a king – was paramount in the new nation.

The founders were so intent upon establishing this fact that their design was to inculcate a small federal government that could not re-concentrate power to a small centralized cadre, while at the same time allowing for considerable emphasis on states’ rights, thus further diluting the power of Washington. They seemed to feel that the feds should mostly take care of foreign affairs, the currency, and provide a strong military to protect the citizens, and not much else.

A number of federal agencies have been brought on line since the 1780s, some necessary and some that ought to be deep-sixed as early as yesterday, like the Education and Energy Departments. Obama has added the new dimension called the czars in order to bypass a recognizable oligarchy in preference to un-elected or even congressionally un-investigated shadowy figures making key decisions affecting everything from oil-drilling to healthcare. The Cabinet secretaries are all in place but the czars call the shots.

Obama has circumvented the Constitution in other ways. The big deal currently is Obama’s budget. Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution: All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives… . Section 8: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence [sic]… .

Obama knows his “budget” is not worth the reams of paper on which it’s printed, especially since the House has already routinely passed budgets on which Senate Majority Leader Reid has not for nearly two years allowed a vote. Obama can’t inculcate a budget any more than an orangutan can, but he can blame the Senate republicans for stopping the process even though the democrats control the Senate (and controlled both legislative bodies 2009-11) and could pass a budget tomorrow. All the president can do is sign or veto, something that won’t happen before the elections in November.

The president’s most recent un-Constitutional power grab concerning the contraception issue and the churches is a First Amendment violation, to be sure, but it’s also a Tenth Amendment issue: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” The president is not empowered by the Constitution to mandate what citizens and entities such as businesses must purchase. That is a power/privilege granted to the people.

The president can’t even make people get flu shots, much less affect far more important items. Obama, however, has directed employers and insurance companies and people, all as individual entities, to do what he says with respect to insurance and what it must cover. He’s even mandated/regulated that insurance companies provide services at no charge, meaning that the taxpayers will pick up the tab. This is an egregious violation of the Constitution, about which he’s supposed to be an expert.

Last year, the most egregious violation had to do with his slaughter of Libyans in a war he conducted by executive order when the Constitution is plain in Section I, Article 8, that only Congress can declare war, though Congress itself expanded rightly or wrongly on that provision with the War Powers Act, which Obama also monstrously violated.

On the basis of his presidency vis-à-vis the Constitution, Obama the Constitutional scholar has either proven his abject stupidity or he has an agenda which is demonstrably anti-American. Some people liked to call George Bush a cowboy but he was a piker when compared to Obama, who in the kindest terms can be classified as a bona fide loose cannon threatening American civil rights and the existence of sovereign nations.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark