Actions by president challenged as in conflict with founding document
It’s no secret that President Obama and the U.S. Constitution have been at odds over the last eight years.
But while campaigning this week for Hillary Clinton, he let it slip that he, indeed, believes a president has the power to violate the Constitution.
He was in North Carolina, blasting Donald Trump for the 2005 video of the GOP candidate making remarks about women, reported Business Insider.
“If you disrespect women before you are elected president, you will disrespect women when you’re in office,” Obama said.
“Imagine what you’ll do when you actually have the power to violate the Constitution along those lines.”
The left-leaning Mediaite interpreted the remark as a “warning to people about the dangers of what Trump could do with actual presidential power.”
Mediaite referenced a longer quote from Obama on the same subject: “If you disrespect the Constitution by threatening to shut down the press when it doesn’t say things you like or threaten to throw your opponent in jail or discriminate against people of different faiths – if you do that before you are elected, when what are you gonna do when you have actual power to do those things?”
It was an opening through which Hot Air blogger Larry O’Connor could not resist jumping.
O’Connor said it was “so ripe with irony,” it was tempting to “leave his quote as it is, without any commentary, and let the reader add their own remarks.”
“That’s right: the president whose actions have been over-ruled by the Supreme Court of the United States more than any other modern president is accusing Donald Trump of ‘disrespect(ing) the Constitution.’”
For example, he cited Obama’s claim that Trump would shut down the press, pointing out that “the Obama administration made a deliberate effort to exclude Fox News from a press pool during the height of its war with the network.”
And what about the threat to throw opponents in jail?
Sixteen times Democrats tried to prosecute their opponents, O’Connor noted.
And what about discriminating against people of different faiths?
O’Connor cited two headlines: “WikiLeaks Report: Obama Admin Discriminated Against Arab Christians for Top Jobs” and “U.S. ‘discriminates’ against Christian refugees, accepts 96% Muslims, 3% Christians.”
“Yeah, if we’ve learned anything over the nearly eight years of the Obama administration, we’ve learned that the president and his supporters are fanatical in their respect for the Constitution,” O’Connor wrote.
WND columnist Burt Prelutsky wrote that Obama’s “crimes and misdemeanors are too long to list, but it’s worth noting that he has befriended our enemies and betrayed our allies; pushed the Affordable Care Act down our throats; paid Iran $150 billion while paving their path to a nuclear arsenal; handed Iraq and Afghanistan back to the bad guys; sided with the mob against the police; thrown open the gates to Gitmo; divided America along racial, religious and economic lines; nearly doubled our national debt; and left his dirty footprints all over the Constitution.”
The late Phyllis Schlafly didn’t overlook Obama’s fight with the Constitution.
“Barack Obama has now revealed that he unilaterally plans to use executive orders to ‘bypass’ Congress. His shocking words were: ‘We are not just going to be waiting for legislation. … I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone. And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions,’ she wrote.
“I hope every American actually sees Obama speak those words on a TV or computer screen. His dictatorial attitude, layered with arrogance and condescension, should be repudiated by a self-governing people.
“Obama claims to have taught constitutional law, but he doesn’t seem to be familiar with the Constitution’s words. Lost in his shuffle are ‘all legislative powers’ are vested in Congress, and the president ‘shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.’”
Issues on which Obama has been accused of being in conflict with the Constitution:
- A federal judge said his funding for Obamacare was unconstitutional.
- A court was told Obama’s gun-control plans “exceed the powers of the president.”
- National Review columnist Ilya Shapiro once pointed out Obama’s 10 top constitutional violations of 2015, including financial bailouts.
- His belief that “gay” trumps religion in the U.S. Constitution.
- His ordering of religious believers to provide abortion pills in violation of their faith.
- The Iran deal.
- Obama’s amnesty plan.
- His agenda to enact same-sex “marriage.”
- His recess appointments.
- His refusal to deport illegal aliens.
- His attempt to coerce Catholics to support birth control
- His mandate over private health care records.
- His orders that schools and public buildings open women’s restrooms to men who say they are women.
- His insistence that states cannot deprive abortionists of public funding.
- That the feds can orders states not to enforce immigration laws.
- That the federal government can simply change definitions of words in federal law, even though it may cost Americans.
- That he can decide which people will be allowed to move into certain neighborhoods.
- That he can decide who faces prosecution.
- That he can change the Constitution’s language, from “freedom of religion” to “freedom of worship.”
- That he can dictate speech codes
- That the IRS can selectively target Christians and conservatives because they disagree with Obama’s policies.
Back in 2008, WND founder and CEO Joseph Farah wrote about Obama’s view of the Constitution.
He pointed out that although Obama has been described as a constitutional “law scholar” and taught constitutional law in Chicago, Obama doesn’t take seriously the restrictions the Constitution imposes.
Farah quoted from Obama’s own book: “What the framework of our Constitution can do is organize the way by which we argue about our future. All of its elaborate machinery – its separation of powers and checks and balances and federalist principles and Bill of Rights – are designed to force us into a conversation, a ‘deliberative democracy’ in which all citizens are required to engage in a process of testing their ideas against an external reality, persuading others of their point of view, and building shifting alliances of consent. Because power in our government is so diffuse, the process of making law in America compels us to entertain the possibility that we are not always right and to sometimes change our minds; it challenges us to examine our motives and our interests constantly, and suggests that both our individual and collective judgments are at once legitimate and highly fallible.”
Such “lack of clarity,” Farah wrote, suggests that Obama believes the Constitution is “a guidepost for testing our ideas.”
“In other words, he intends to unshackle the government from constitutional restraints. Of course, when you unshackle government power from constitutional restraints, those shackles, as the framers understood, tend to wind up restraining liberty”