— by Polydamas
Our nation’s founder Thomas Paine wrote in his 1776 bestseller “Common Sense” that “in America, law is king. For in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king and there ought to be no other”. Another Founding Father John Adams, who drafted the Massachusetts Constitution, wrote that “government of laws and not of men”.
More than a century and a half before the American Revolution, the notion that the king was the law or even above the law was the prevalent one. In 1610, England’s King James I wanted to prohibit by his own proclamation the construction of new buildings in London. The regular procedure for the passage of laws was through the British Parliament, but King James did not wish to go that route.
King James’ proposed course of action was without precedent. The question of whether King James’ proposed action was legal was given to Sir Edward Coke, who was the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and the other judges of that court. Coke had previously been the Attorney General of England who had prosecuted Sir Walter Raleigh for treason.The details of Sir Coke’s decision can be found in the Case of Proclamations. (http://bit.ly/1ubvcwN).
The Lord Chancellor of England argued that the judges must “confirm the King’s prerogative” with their opinions in order to “maintain the power and prerogative of the King”. If there was no precedent for the King’s actions, the King was free to “order in it, according to his wisdom, and for the good of his subjects”. He stated that the King should be free “to apply his medicine according to the quality of the disease”. He also argued that, if the King could not exercise his prerogative, he “would be no more than the Duke of Venice”, a lowly aristocrat and not the head of the British Empire. Also, if “the King was so much restrained in his prerogative, that it was to be feared the bonds would be broken”, meaning that a decision against the King risked breaking both the bonds of loyalty that bound British subjects to their King and the legal bonds that had restrained the King’s absolute power since the Magna Carta.
Despite being placed under enormous pressure to approve the King’s exercise of power, Coke stood up to the King and ruled that “the King by his proclamation of other ways cannot change any part of the common law, or statute law, or the customs of the realm”. Coke continued that “the King cannot create any offence by his prohibition or proclamation, which was not an offence before, for that was to change the law, and to make an offence which was not”. Coke’s ruling carried the day and became one of the foundations of British law and, by extension, American law.
Four centuries after the showdown between King James I and Sir Edward Coke and nearly two and a half centuries after the American Revolution, a new king rules in America. United Stated President Barack Hussein Obama’s executive orders are no different in nature than King James’ proclamations. Both executive orders and proclamations are an end run around the legislative branch of the government. There is no difference, except in scope, between King James prohibiting by proclamation the construction of new buildings in London and President Obama amending and deleting by executive order the laws implementing Obamacare. President Obama’s executive orders bypassing Congress to castrate America’s immigration laws in order to flood America with an endless tide of illegal immigrants, grant them citizenship so they can vote for the Democratic Party ad infinitum, and, more importantly, overloading America’s welfare rolls and bankrupting the United States to cause the collapse of the social order by as per the teachings of Columbia University’s socialist professors Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, are nothing more than the proclamations of a king.
President Barack Obama’s rationale for ruling by executive order are the same as King James’ reasoning, to prescribe his own medicines for the ills of American society, according to his wisdom and for the good of his subjects. Unless the contemporary heirs of Sir Edward Coke, both in Congress and in the United States Supreme Court, take a stand against President Obama’s rule by executive order, America should just anoint him King Barack I.
This past week, on August 4, 2014, exactly one month after it celebrated its 238th Fourth of July, the United States celebrated the 53rd birthday of its own king, King Barack I. However, in 21st century America, the uninformed American people did not notice because they were too busy with the “panem et circenses”, bread and circuses, of this era, to the great dismay of the Founding Fathers.
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John Hinderaker “Is Barack Obama Plotting a Coup?” August 3, 2014 Powerline.com (http://bit.ly/1p9hQOy)
That seems like an awfully strong word, but it is the term that distinguished law professor Glenn Reynolds, no hysteric, uses to describe the Obama administration’s oft-reported plan to issue executive amnesty to five or six million illegal immigrants in violation of federal law. Glenn’s characterization is a fair one. When a tyrant asserts the right to rule by decree in a state that has formerly been subject to the rule of law, he is commonly described as carrying out a coup d’etat.
That is just what the Obama administration has done, and reportedly will continue to do. When Obama changed the Affordable Care Act by decree–to name just one example, substituting “2014” for “2013” in a critical provision of the statute–he acted as a tyrant. In his refusal to enforce the immigration laws, contrary to the Constitution which requires him to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” he has acted like a tinpot dictator, asserting the right to change or ignore the law by fiat. If he now directly nullifies Section 274(a) of the Immigration and Nationalities Act by legalizing, and issuing work permits to, five or six million illegal immigrants, thereby repealing federal law by decree, how else can we describe his action but as a coup? The Obama administration openly takes the position that the rule of law no longer applies.
Can you imagine the furor that would have resulted if President Nixon, in the midst of the Watergate crisis, had asserted the right to repeal or amend federal statutes by decree? No, actually, you can’t. Forget impeachment; he would have been escorted out of the Oval Office by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. What, then, makes Barack Obama special? How can he claim the right to rule by decree without suffering the same condemnation? Well, the answer is obvious: he is a Democrat. But is that really enough? No president, Democrat or Republican, has ever dreamed of asserting such unconstitutional authority.
I am one of many who have ridiculed the Democrats’ seemingly weird obsession with impeachment. But perhaps there is method to the Democrats’ apparent madness. If they know that President Obama is about to do something that obviously warrants impeachment–asserting the right to rule by executive decree, and repealing the nation’s immigration laws by fiat–perhaps it is shrewd on their part to preemptively attack the idea of impeachment and commit Republicans to the fact that they have no thought of any such thing. Then, when Obama makes his move, it will be harder for Republicans to switch gears and start talking about removing him from office. That strikes me as the most logical explanation for the Democrats’ well-coordinated, but seemingly pointless, anti-impeachment campaign.
Today, the White House started backing off on plans to issue an executive amnesty. Maybe, as Glenn Reynolds says, this is a sign that someone in the White House is in touch with reality. Perhaps a coup has been averted, on this subject at least. But eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, so let’s not let down our guard.
