Obama under pressure ..... apart from Detroit going bust , here are other political headaches !
Affordable Healthcare unilateral delay of Employer Mandate issue by President Obama .....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/on-the-health-care-mandate-obama-reaches-beyond-the-law/2013/07/18/d442aefc-efb4-11e2-a1f9-ea873b7e0424_story.html
Ronald D. Rotunda is a professor of jurisprudence at Chapman University and co-author of a six-volume treatise on constitutional law. He was assistant majority counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee from April 1973 to July 1974.
Old-time monarchies and modern dictators govern by decree. Not so in the United States, where the Constitution does not give the president such power. So it is fair to wonder what authorized President Obama to “suspend” the portion of the Affordable Care Act that imposes a health-care mandate on employers.
There are times when the president can issue decrees that have the force of law. For example, Congress may legislate that certain things will or will not happen unless the president issues certain findings. In 1936, the Supreme Court upheld a law passed in 1934 that made it a crime to sell munitions to Bolivia, which was engaged in an armed conflict, if the president made certain findings.
The Constitution also gives the president specific unilateral powers, such as the power to decide which foreign countries to recognize and the authority to grant pardons. The president can refuse to prosecute someone criminally because the Constitution gives the executive branch absolute prosecutorial discretion. That is how Obama justified not enforcing deportation laws in certain circumstances.
The president also need not enforce a law that he believes is unconstitutional. Sound precedent justifies this power. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) is, in effect, the lawyer for the government. It issues legal opinions that courts often rely on. It advises that the president may refuse to enforce a law he thinks is unconstitutional. It derived this power from two clauses of the Constitution: One requires the president to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” The other requires him to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” The OLC agreed with Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, who wrote in 1868 that the president’s obligation to defend the Constitution authorizes him to decline to enforce statutes that he believes violate it.
The OLC has also concluded that the president could refuse to enforce a law before the judiciary decides whether it is constitutional. Thus, before the Supreme Court ruled on the issue last month, Obama acted properly in legally ordering the Justice Department not to defend a federal law he considered unconstitutional because it did not recognize same-sex marriage.
The president does not, however, have carte blanche to refuse to enforce the law. “Obviously,” the OLC wrote in 1990, the president cannot “refuse to enforce a statute he opposes for policy reasons.” In 1838, the Supreme Court advised: “To contend that the obligation imposed on the President to see the laws faithfully executed implies a power to forbid their execution is a novel construction of the constitution and entirely inadmissible.” When President Richard Nixon refused to spend funds that Congress had ordered him to spend, the court held without dissent in 1975 that the president must follow the federal statute, not his policy preferences.
Obama’s decision to “suspend” the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act has no support in precedent and dramatically shifts the arc of presidential power. The Affordable Care Act has no provision giving the president power to suspend or postpone the mandate. The law requires employers with 50 or more full-time workers to provide health-insurance coverage or pay a penalty. Section 1513(d) of the act — titled “Effective Date” — stipulates that this mandate “shall apply” after “December 31, 2013.”
Which part of “shall” gives the president the power to ignore the law that he signed with such fanfare? If the president can change the effective date to Dec. 31, 2014, what prevents him from changing the date again, along with other provisions? As Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) asked: “This was the law. How can they change the law?”
If the president has the discretion to ignore laws that he prefers not to exist, the constitutional limits of presidential authority have the restraining power of air. President George H.W. Bush argued, unsuccessfully, that Congress should lower the capital gains rate. Under Obama’s faulty interpretation of presidential power, he should have simply instructed the Internal Revenue Service not to tax capital gains at a rate greater than 10 percent, regardless of the tax code. The Supreme Court held in 1998 that it was unconstitutional to give the president a line-item veto that Congress could override. Obama’s newfound “power” is much greater than that, because there is no procedure to override a presidential decree.
Going forward, why should lobbyists urge Congress to create, extend or change a tax deduction when all they have to do is persuade the president? Obama, a proven fundraiser, could outdo himself over the next several years with this new “power.” Nixon might have salivated at such power — which simply isn’t part of the president’s authority.
And Union support falling away....
Obama caught between rock and hard place as base expects DOJ prosecution but the law and facts don't support same....
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/07/19/video-obama-tries-to-break-it-to-the-left-that-the-dojs-not-going-to-prosecute-zimmerman/
Video: Obama tries to break it to the left that the DOJ’s not going to prosecute Zimmerman
POSTED AT 4:31 PM ON JULY 19, 2013 BY ALLAHPUNDIT
The line that’s getting attention from this afternoon’s impromptu presser is that Trayvon Martin “could have been me 35 years ago,” but that’s both implausible and tangential to his real message. Why implausible? Because, if you believe Zimmerman’s account of the fight, Martin ambushed him and then pounded on him relentlessly after he’d fallen to the ground. Say what you like about President Spock, it’s hard to imagine him reacting that way to anything. To believe the “I could have been Trayvon” claim, you have to believe the most sinister explanation for what happened between Martin and Zimmerman — that Zimmerman killed him essentially in cold blood for the crime of being black, not in self-defense. No one outside of O’s lefty base seems to believe that anymore, which tells you who the target audience here is.
But never mind that. Talking publicly about race is virtually all downside for The One, which is why he does it only when he’s forced to. (His wildly overpraised speech on race during the 2008 campaign was designed to calm the uproar over Rev. Wright.) It’s a given that the media will mindlessly praise him for his brilliance on the theory that anything the first black president has to say about race must be profound, but he gets no real political benefit from speaking up. He can’t be too critical of black culture or it’ll be considered a betrayal; if he’s too critical of law enforcement or the white majority, he risks damaging his party by alienating white voters that Democrats are desperate to hold onto. His allegedly “brilliant” comments on race are thus really just an exercise in tightrope-walking, with a little dished out to each side. It’s easy to fall off the tightrope — remember “the police acted stupidly”? — so his goal is simply to be as politic as possible without being so politic that the left decides he’s a sellout. No matter what he says, it’ll be “divisive,” a situation no pol ever wants to be in.
The point is, it takes a lot to get him to inch out on the tightrope. What got him out there this time? Simple: He knows that Holder has no case against Zimmerman and that the left’s going to be disappointed when the DOJ investigation is dropped. Today’s presser was him reminding them that he feels their pain in order to brace them for the big letdown. And the letdown is coming:
The judge conducted the trial in a professional manner. The prosecution and the defense made their arguments. The juries (sic) were properly instructed that in a – in a case such as this, reasonable doubt was relevant. And they rendered a verdict.And once the jury’s spoken, that’s how our system works…But beyond protests or vigils, the question is: Are there some concrete things that we might be able to do? I know that Eric Holder is reviewing what happened down there, but I think it’s important for people to have some clear expectations here. Traditionally, these are issues of state and local government. The criminal code and law enforcement is traditionally done at the state and local levels, not at the federal levels.
Follow the last link for a full transcript. He talks about the black experience with racial profiling but also acknowledges that “somebody like Trayvon Martin was probably, statistically, more likely to be shot by a peer than he was by somebody else.” He talks about “soul-searching” and training for local cops, but he also says this, which was a pleasant surprise:
You know, there’s been talk about, should we convene a conversation on race? I haven’t seen that be particularly productive when, you know, politicians try to organize conversations. They end up being stilted and politicized, and folks are locked into the positions they already have…And let me just leave you with – with the final thought that, as difficult and challenging as this whole episode has been for a lot of people, I don’t want us to lose sight that things are getting better. Each successive generation seems to be making progress in changing attitudes when it comes to race. It doesn’t mean we’re in a post-racial society. It doesn’t mean that racism is eliminated.But, you know, when I talk to Malia and Sasha and I listen to their friends and I see them interact, they’re better than we are. They’re better than we were on these issues. And that’s true in every community that I’ve visited all across the country.
The “national conversation on race” is political garbage and race relations are in fact getting better. He might be the only prominent Democrat in the country willing to concede those two points, but if there can only be one, it’s good that it’s the guy at the top who’s doing it. Speaking of garbage, though:
And for those who – who resist that idea, that we should think about something like these Stand Your Ground laws, I just ask people to consider, if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk? And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman, who had followed him in a car, because he felt threatened? And if the answer to that question is at least ambiguous, then it seems to me that we might want to examine those kinds of laws.
Could Trayvon have stood his ground if Zimmerman punched him in the face and then started beating his head against the sidewalk? I sure hope so. Would he have been justified in shooting Zimmerman for following him in the car, though? Er, no, and the law doesn’t say that he is. The Florida statute gives you the right to stand your ground and use force if you’ve been “attacked.” Has O even looked at these laws? Or is he distorting them purposely to build momentum for the left’s new political initiative?
Anyway. I didn’t see the clip, but Zimmerman’s brother apparently received Obama’s comments reasonably well.
COMBAT OUTPOST WILDERNESS, Afghanistan — The Taliban and its allies are plotting a bloody and spectacular end to U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.
Foreign fighters are pouring into the eastern part of the country to take on U.S. and allied forces in what will likely be the final fighting season for American troops here.
Pakistani-based terror groups like the Haqqani Network and others are calling upon “every house, every family” to send fighters into Afghanistan, Afghan army commanders stationed at the American base in Paktia province told The Hill.
“The madrassas are emptying" in Pakistan, added Lt. Col. David Hamann, who leads the American Security Force Assistance Advisory Team (SFAAT) at Combat Outpost Matun Hill.
The influx of foreign insurgents ahead of the White House’s 2014 troop withdrawal deadline comes just as the administration is facing mounting public pressure to end the war quickly.
The administration is struggling to decide whether to leave any troops behind after 2014, and has revived the “zero option” postwar plan that would leave no troops in the country post-2014.
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| Taliban Office Plot to Break Up Afghanistan: Karzai Aide |
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