Well, golly gee whiz, that's a novel justification, isn't it?:
Facing an expect onslaught of opposition, the administration plans to argue that Congress failed to provide enough resources to fully enforce U.S. laws, thereby ceding wide latitude to White House to prioritize deportations of the 11.5 million people who are in the country illegally, administration officials and legal experts said. But Republicans, too, are exploring their legal options for stopping Obama from what they've deemed egregious presidential overreaching.
Ah; so Congress failed to provide enough resources to enable the Regime to enforce immigration laws they were already not, and have no intention of ever, enforcing anyway. Those resources were, presumably, included in the Senate's Schumer-Rubio bill from a year ago, which was precisely the legislative amnesty O was demanding, and which House Republicans wisely, if narrowly, refused to commit policy and electoral seppuku and rubber-stamp. Something that, believe it or not, they get to do under the constitutional separation of powers, and which doesn't automatically get forfeited to the Executive Branch if Congress doesn't follow presidential "orders".
None dare call him a dictator....except me, of course.
How, then, will President Wide Latitude use his usurped Article I, Section 1 powers? Same way he did two years ago with "Delayed Action for Childhood Arrivals": our old friend, "prosecutorial discretion":
After resisting calls to act alone in hopes Congress would pass a comprehensive immigration fix, Obama in June bowed to immigration activists and said that "if Congress will not do their job, at least we can do ours." The most sweeping, controversial step under consideration involves halting deportation for millions, a major expansion of a 2012 Obama program that deferred prosecutions for those brought here illegally as children.
Roughly half a million have benefited from that program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA.
But while prosecutors are routinely expected to use their discretion on a case-by-case basis, such blanket exempting of entire categories of people has never been done on the scale of what Obama is considering — potentially involving many millions of people if he extends relief to parents of DACA children, close relatives of U.S. citizens or immigrants with clean criminal records.
"The question is how broadly can the president extend the categories and still stay on the side of spectrum of ensuring the laws are faithfully executed?" said Cristina Rodriguez, who left the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in 2013 to teach at Yale Law School.
Forgive me, folks, for the parenthetical, but this must be addressed again: It is not "Congress's job" to do whatever the president wants, a fact that Democrats will rediscover in about thirteen femtoseconds should there ever be another Republican elected POTUS. And you can be damn sure we'll remember that phrase if that happy occurrence ever does take place, and sledgehammer them with it, and with Article I, Section 1 and the separation of powers doctrine, mercilessly.
Sheesh, it reminds of me of when S'Mores The Wonder Kitty keeps jumping atop our kitchen table.
Now, then. Prosecutorial discretion is supposed to be a microcosmic phenomenon that takes place within the confines of established law. It does not make the enforcement of established law macrocosmically optional. Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 9 clearly states:
Before [the President-Elect] enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:-"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."
"Faithfully executing the office" includes enforcing all constitutional laws on the books. Such laws include those under Article IV, Section 4:
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.
Not a lot of wiggle room in that word "shall". It is, in fact, iron-clad. Which means Barack Obama has no choice - legally and constitutionally - but to fully, and (heh) faithfully execute all immigration laws. He has - legally and constitutionally - no - zero, zip, nada, bupkis - discretion of any dimensions to disregard them for any reason, most especially because he doesn't ideologically agree with them, and/or that they impede his power-usurpation ambitions.
However, as I keep having to point out, the chief legacy Barack Obama will leave behind after his remains are carried out of the White House decades from now is the severance of power from legal authority. It is, in fact, a vulnerability, an unavoidable weakness, of the "Republican Form" of government the Framers gave us that, blessedly and amazingly, no POTUS had fully exploited until this one. And it is revealed in this single sentence:
Obama's actions will almost surely be challenged in court.
Yes, I'm sure they will. But in the mean time, he will have amnestied six million more illegal aliens. With many millions more to come. And every last one of them will be casting votes for Democrats, in "red" states, by 2016 at the latest. Will the SCOTUS eventually strike down O's amnesty decree? Probably, assuming Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas are still breathing. But by that time - several years from now - the damage will already have long since been done, with no possibility of undoing it.
That is the weakness in our constitutional system: a tyrannical president can act instantly, with extreme prejudice, while the wheels of law and justice turn with molasses & rust-encrusted torpidity. And when the law & justice wheels finally catch up with a lawless Executive usurpation, the courts have no power to enforce their ruling on the Executive, because enforcement is an Executive power.
Which brings us back to the "I" word:
"If the president fails to faithfully execute the laws of our country, we will hold him accountable," Boehner said, according to an individual who participated in the call.
The House already has passed legislation to block Obama from expanding DACA and, through its power of the purse, could attempt to cut off the funds that would be needed to implement the expansion.
Or, "Congress failing to provide enough resources to enable the Regime to enforce immigration laws."
House Republicans could also consider widening or amending their existing lawsuit against Obama over his health care law, a case that both parties have suggested could be a prelude to impeachment proceedings.
Impeachment proceedings are the only even semi-viable option Congress has left to recover the powers Obama has stolen from them. But even impeachment really isn't viable because there is absolutely no chance of his being convicted in next year's Senate, much less this one in which Harry (G)Reid wouldn't even bother scheduling a trial, and he would hail his acquittal as a vindication, an endorsement of all his previous dictatorial actions, and a mandate for the effective coup de tat that will finish the "fundamental transformation" job even as he vilified Republicans for attempting a "racist coup de tat". And the LIVs and NIVs would munch that down like Beggin' Strips.
It's precisely why O is all but daring John Boehner to pull the impeachment trigger. For The One, it's a win-win proposition: either (1) he flips every surviving "red" state "blue," finally locking in that heretofore elusive "permanent Democrat majority," or (2) he flips every "red" state "blue" even before his illegal alien reinforcements can do it for him. Either way, Barack Obama wins.
We have the law and the Constitution on our side, but he has all the power, and is holding all the trump cards.
Kind of like if S'Mores The Wonder Kitty was the size of Aslan.
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