impeachment = Now

Will Congress Rein In This ‘Imperial’ Presidency?
Dec. 7, 2013 9:00am
Diana West

Diana West is the author of American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character (St. Martin's
Press 2013), and The Death of the Grown-Up: How America's Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western
Civilization (St. Martin's Press 2007). Her weekly newspaper column is syndicated by Universal Uclick, and

West also serves as Washington Correspondent for the European weekly newspaper Dispatch International.

West is one of 19 co-authors (including Frank Gaffney, Andrew C. McCarthy and James Woolsey) of
Shariah:The Threat to America, a 2010 publication of the Center for Security Policy. West's work has appeared
in many publications and she has made numerous television and radio appearances. She was recently featured
in the Glenn Beck TV documentaries "The Project" and "Rumors of War III."

An extraordinary thing happened in Washington, D.C., this week. Appearing before a House Judiciary
subcommittee, several constitutional scholars forthrightly and unmistakably outlined the leading danger to the
survival of our constitutional republic: the usurpation of powers by President Barack Hussein Obama.

This wasn’t just me, a non-lawyer, perplexed by how out-of-whack constitutional checks and balances have
become and, in particular, how enfeebled the legislative branch is. This wasn’t even Mark Levin, a constitutional
lawyer himself, explaining to his radio audience that we are living in “post-constitutional” times.

This was, for starters, Jonathan Turley, a liberal Georgetown law professor, who, noting that he once voted for
Obama, nonetheless warned America that the concentration of executive branch powers, having accelerated
under George W. Bush, is approaching a crisis under Obama.

“The problem with what the president is doing is that he’s not simply posing a danger to the constitutional
system,” Turley said. “He’s becoming the very danger the Constitution was designed to avoid.”

“He’s becoming the very danger the Constitution was designed to avoid.”
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Turley was referring to the imperial-style powers Obama’s executive branch has amassed to the detriment of the
Constitution’s system of checks and balances. When functional, checks and balances prevent any one branch of
government (executive, legislative, judiciary) from becoming more powerful than any other. Today, that system is
broken.

“Each branch is given the tools to defend itself, and the framers assumed that they would have the ambition and
institutional self-interest to use them,” Turley stated in written testimony. “That assumption is now being put to
the test as many members remain silent in the face of open executive encroachment by the executive branch.”

Nicholas Rosenkranz, a constitutional law professor at Georgetown also affiliated with the libertarian Cato
Institute, cogently laid out several examples of executive branch encroachment. The first was suspending the
“employer mandate” in Obamacare via presidential decree (via blog post!) at the White House website; the
second was enforcing by executive order the DREAM Act, despite its (repeated) failure to pass in Congress and
become the law of the land; the third was presiding over an IRS that has discriminated against and punished
political opponents in the Tea Party.

According to the Constitution, Rosenkranz explained in his testimony, “The president cannot suspend laws
altogether. He cannot favor unenacted bills over duly enacted laws. And he cannot discriminate on the basis of
politics in his execution of the laws. The president has crossed all three of these lines.”

Another witness was Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute. Emphasizing the
non-partisan urgency in the need to address presidential overreach, Cannon noted he was not a Republican and
that he in fact supported Obama’s social policies regarding women, minorities and homosexuals. Cannon
outlined numerous unilateral actions President Obama has taken to retool the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare)
– in effect, making law, which is not within a president’s powers. According to Cannon, it is no longer accurate to
say the Affordable Care Act, as passed by Congress, is still the law of the land.

Cannon’s testimony continued: “Today, with respect to health care, the law of the land is whatever one man says
it is – or whatever this divided Congress will let that one man get away with saying. What this one man says may
flatly contradict federal statute. It may suddenly confer benefits on favored groups, or tax disfavored groups
without representation. It may undermine the careful and costly planning done by millions of individuals and
businesses. It may change from day to day.” And then: “This method of lawmaking has more in common with
monarchy than democracy or a constitutional republic.”

“More in common with a monarchy”? I don’t think I’ve ever heard such dire testimony. Will it get Congress’
attention? It got mine. What about the American people? Will they be alarmed by what Turley describes as a
“shift of power within our tripartite government toward a more imperial presidential model”? Will they let their
representatives know they better start checking and balancing presidential powers that these same
representatives have permitted to run amok?

This takes us to another problem, one I’m not certain the founders provided an answer for: a Fourth Estate (the
press) in the tank for the current chief executive. In other words, will the American people even hear much about
this constitutional case against Barack Obama? So far, most media have yawned. Or, in the case of Dana
Milbank in the “Washington Post,” misreported the hearing as a meeting of impeachment-obsessed
Republicans. (At his blog, Turley went so far as to correct Milbank, writing that impeachment “actually came up
little in the hearing, which was 99 percent focused on the separation of powers and the rise of an
uber-presidency under Bush and Obama.”)

Impeachment and even elections, that natural correction mechanism, aside: “There is one last thing to which the
people can resort if the government does not respect the restraints that the Constitution places on the
government,” Michael Cannon said in the most dramatic remarks of the session. “Abraham Lincoln talked about
our right to alter our government or our revolutionary right to overthrow it. That is certainly something that no one
wants to contemplate,” he continued. “If the people come to believe that the government is no longer
constrained by the laws, then they will conclude that neither are they.”

And then what happens?