President Obama made his 2012 State of the Union address and as expected, it was primarily a campaign speech to reinforce his changes for re-election in November. He is not the first President to have done this, and will probably not be the last. However, this speech was different because what Americans need to look at now, and consider when voting in November, is not just the State of the Union, but the State of the Constitution. The fact is that if we discard our Constitution there will be no union. The United States of America will cease to exist.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration, with the help of the leftist elite in the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives, and even some Federal judges are systematically destroying our Constitution, our freedoms, and our country. It is not an accident; it is being done with malice and design. Here are the facts about what has occurred in the three years that Obama has been in office.
Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution has been violated by Congress passing the Obama health care bill. Congress has no authority under that section or any other section of the Constitution to enact legislation requiring the American people to purchase health care insurance, or to provide free health care to illegal aliens. Yet, this among other things is what has been done. I am confident that the U.S. Supreme Court will rule that it is unconstitutional; yet, President Obama has repeatedly shown his disdain for the rulings of the Judicial Branch of government.
Article 1, Section 1 of the Constitution also gives Congress the sole legislative powers in the federal government. Article 2 of the Constitution that establishes the Presidency and the Executive Branch of government gives no such legislative powers to the President. In other words, only Congress can make laws and the President and his cabinet appointees can only enforce laws made by Congress; the President has no authority to make laws. Yet, that is exactly what Obama is doing.
By misusing the power to issue Executive orders to enforce laws or take emergency action if Congress is not in session the President is bypassing Congress and the Constitution to implement his personal agenda on immigration, cap and trade, gun control, and in many other areas. He actually brags about this in his taxpayer funded campaign speeches, and during the State of the Union Address he stated that he plans to continue the practice if Congress doesn’t do exactly what he demands.
In addition, ever since he took office Obama has continuously violated Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution by making appoints to major positions in the Executive Branch of government without the required Senate approval. I’m referring of course to the over 40 Czars that the President has appointed. These appointments are in numerous areas from overseeing the takeover of the automobile industry to regulating free speech on the internet. These Czars are not under the control of the Congress, and are given massive budgets at taxpayer expense. By the way, the very use of the term Czar violates Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution that specifically forbids the U.S. government from bestowing titles of nobility on anyone.
Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution does give the President the right to make short term appointments when the Senate is in recess. The important point here is that the Constitution only empowers the Senate to declare when it is in recess. Obama recently showed his disdain for that part of our governing document by making several high level appointments when the Senate had not formally declared a recess. Obama claimed he has the right to decide when the Senate is in recess. The purpose of these appointments was to put people in positions of power that the Senate would not have approved. The reasons are already becoming clear because the new appointees to the National Labor Relations Board are preparing to order companies that are not unionized to turn over the private phone numbers and email addresses of their employees to labor union organizers. This is a clear violation of the right of privacy of these individuals.
Article 2, Section 2 also authorizes the President of the United States to sign treaties with other countries; however, the Senate must ratify the treaties by a two thirds vote of those Senators present and voting. Now Obama has decided that this Constitutional requirement should not keep him from doing what he wants. Since the SOPA and PIPA bills were withdrawn in Congress Obama is looking for a new way to take control of the Internet and limit freedom of speech.
According to the U.S. Justice Foundation Obama is going to sign and enforce an international treaty “which will give governments and special interest groups the power to shut down websites, and terminate your access to the internet, without the due process of law.” It is called the ACTA Treaty and Obama does not intend to send it to the Senate for ratification, but instead will do it as a “sole Executive Agreement.”
There is nothing in the Constitution that allows such agreements although Federal courts have allowed Presidents to enter into some international agreements that are minor in nature. The ACTA agreement is not minor, but would allow websites to be shut down, such as my blog site, at the whim of the President. I also suspect that Obama is planning to use the same approach to enter into and enforce the United Nations “Small Arms Treaty” that would virtually eliminate the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution that protects the rights of Americans to keep and bear arms.
The state of the constitution is not good; in fact it is gravely ill. This article has just scratched the surface and in my next post I will talk more about Obama’s all out assault on the Bill of Rights. A good friend of mine recently said that this upcoming election is not about personalities or even the economy. It is instead a referendum on the Constitution and whether it and our American way of life are to survive. I concur with that statement.
Michael Connelly
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