Lawgiver

bokbluster

"President Obama insists that he’s not a dictator or a king, but if Congress won’t act he will. How’s that work? He picks and chooses the laws he likes. In a speech last week he claimed the right to unilaterally “tweak” the Affordable Care Act because this is not a “normal political environment” – meaning Congress won’t do what he wants.

"Funny, he didn’t have any trouble getting Congress’s cooperateration when they tweaked the law to subsidize the health care government workers must now buy through the exchanges. No one else earning$175,000 gets a subsidy.
George Will offers a pithy analysis of Obama’s Nixonian tendencies here:"

Obama’s unconstitutional steps worse than Nixon’s  "President Obama’s increasingly grandiose claims for presidential power are inversely proportional to his shriveling presidency. Desperation fuels arrogance as, barely 200 days into the 1,462 days of his second term, his pantry of excuses for failure is bare, his domestic agenda is nonexistent and his foreign policy of empty rhetorical deadlines and red lines is floundering. And at last week’s news conference he offered inconvenience as a justification for illegality."...
....
"Serving as props in the scripted charade of White House news conferences, journalists did not ask the pertinent question: “Where does the Constitution confer upon presidents the ‘executive authority’ to ignore the separation of powers by revising laws?” The question could have elicited an Obama rarity: brevity. Because there is no such authority."....    (Emphasis added, TD)

http://netrightdaily.com/2013/05/obama-the-crook/

Obama's Quality of Leadership

American Thinker   "Egypt is vital strategically to U.S. interests and security in the Middle East.  Yet the United States stands by, powerless, as mayhem reigns there and instability simmers dangerously elsewhere.  What has happened to our influence in the world?  A clue can be found in President Barack Obama's own words, his recent response to Russia's grant of asylum to NSA-leaker Edward Snowden:"....
....
"Instead, we have a president whose attitude in a crisis seems to be one of pettiness, detachment and petulance."
There's that word, "petulant" again.

http://www.cagle.com/news/obama-and-putin/page/2/

...."And our enemies?  Leaders like Vladimir Putin are not beguiled by charisma.  Obama's promised "Russian reset," now a shambles, was always a fantasy, a delusion.  It is not difficult to imagine the Russian president, perhaps while out hunting bear, chuckling in amazement at the weakness of the ostensible "Leader of the Free World."  Amazement that is sadly echoed around the world."

 

Putin, in short, will never be seen praying to Barack Obama

Oversight Putsch: President Obama Fired Nearly All Members On Key Intelligence Advisory Board

Atlas Shrugs  "Once again, President Obama's contempt and disdain for the American people is glaring, this time in his claims that he had a serious revamp of the NSA's surveillance activity in his priorities before the Snowden leaks happened. Another big fat lie. He was ramping up the spying, while cutting back on the oversight and review.
"The more authoritarian the President is, the more sycophantic the enemedia is around this cult figure. "

....

“They kicked me off,” said former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.). “I was on it a long time under Bush and under Obama. They wanted to make some changes.”

"Hamilton's ouster is particularly interesting, given that just a month ago, he wrote an oped piece about how the NSA's surveillance efforts have gone too far. Seems like he'd be handy to have on this committee reviewing the NSA surveillance, no?"....

On school choice, Damon's actions speak louder than words

Orange County Register  "Matt Damon, the most outspoken celebrity supporter of public schools and teachers unions, is moving to Los Angeles and enrolling his four children in private schools.

"Damon told Britain's The Guardian, which broke the Edward Snowden/NSA story (apparently, American journalism has been outsourced overseas), "Sending our kids in my family to private school was a big, big deal. And it was a giant family discussion. But it was a circular conversation, really, because ultimately we don't have a choice."

"Actually, he has money and can send his kids to school anywhere, so he does have a choice. Damon wants to deny the rest of America school choice by opposing the voucher system."

29 Cats That Forgot How To Cat

Buzzfeed  "What are you doing, cats? How did this happen? "

"5. This cat who forgot how to sit still on her cat bed."

 

Booby trap! Islamic breast bomb threat at Heathrow airport

By Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs   "All kidding aside, how is  the Obama administration and the TSA going to make us pay? Clearly, these are Muslim women but we can't profile (it might offend Muslims and that would violate the sharia.)
"So now what? Can we expect our daughters, sisters, wives to be felt up and sexually haraassed by goons and maroons? Whatever idiotic response is instituted, rest assured the actual enemy, the jihadic motive will remain sacrosanct. The sanction of the victim."

RUSH: Obama Rodeo Clown ‘Nothing More Than An Event To Advance The Democrat Agenda’

powerlineblog.com

Noisy Room
 

Barack the Lawgiver; Obama sees the Constitution’s separation of powers as a quaint anachronism.

Charles Krauthammer  ...."Traditionally — meaning before Barack Obama — that’s how laws were changed: We have a problem, we hold hearings, we find some new arrangement, which is ratified by Congress and signed by the president.

"That was then. On Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder, a liberal in a hurry, ordered all U.S. attorneys to simply stop charging nonviolent, non-gang-related drug defendants with crimes that, while fitting the offense, carry mandatory sentences. Find some lesser, non-triggering charge. How might you do that? Withhold evidence — e.g., about the amount of dope involved."....
 ....

That’s caudillo talk. That’s banana-republic stuff. In this country, the president is required to win the consent of Congress first.

America is becoming a third-world country under a third-world president. TD

What You Might Not Know About Barack Obama

"Photo of our royal family, His Highness Barack Obama* and Michelle Antoinette Now that Congress and the Supreme Court of the United States have been finally dispatched, we have comfortably settled into a monarchy. Mr. Obama doesn’t have to deal with a big, messy, tough democracy any longer and he no longer has to envy the Chinese who don’t have a Congress to deal with. Mr. Obama has done a fine job of ignoring Congress when they refuse to do what he wants. ‘They have to do their work,’ he says.

.... "The energy sector will soon be nationalized under the king thanks to the EPA regulations about to crash down on them."

*Amazing that the cult of personality is enough to overcome a 200-year-old Constitution. Skeptical of these words? Then check out this child who  prays -yes prays- to Barack Obama.

Obama Foreign Policy: Speak Softly and Carry No Stick

'Incoherent' Obama policy on Egypt under fire as violence spreads
"As Egypt descends into chaos, President Obama is facing increasing criticism that an "incoherent" policy toward the country -- much like U.S. policy toward Syria -- is putting U.S. money and influence on the line without a clear end-game."

In fairness, what else can Obama do given the wide range of opinions given by people who know foreign policy? I must say that the overthrow of Morsi was very much in the interests of the US and Israel, but that may be by lucky accident; Obama policies rarely have US interests in mind but rather those of the  politically correct left.
 

How about this juxtaposition of Krauthammer opinions?
 " I think Obama -- I don't say this often -- I think he got it right today in terms of threading the needle." and....
  "I would say anything that John McCain and Rand Paul agree on, like cutting off aid, has to be wrong."

Foreign Policy.com  Speak Softly and Carry No Stick; Welcome to the Obama Doctrine in Egypt.    ... "At the same time, it's just as absurd to imagine that a suspension of the $1.5 billion a year in U.S. aid, or the threat of it, would have any effect on Egypt's new military rulers. They have waded hip-deep in blood; they won't retrace their steps because Washington is outraged."

 

Hillary the Socialist

http://terrellaftermath.com/

Dick Morris   "Why did Hillary propose to give every newborn baby a $5,000 savings bond? Because Hillary is as close to a European Socialist as we have in this country. She wants government to help the poor and soak the rich. To do that, she needs the votes of the middle class. So she wants the same system they have in Germany and France where everybody gets welfare, so they all vote to keep the big spenders and big taxers in power. And nobody can cut the benefits either, just like you can’t cut social security, because the middle class is too strong politically to get away with it. And by giving everyone money, she gets everyone’s votes. Its her plan. So watch out."

 

Morris worked on the Clinton campaign, so he should know.

Too Good to Last; Time to pay our respects to what was, and for European Jews to move elsewhere?

Mosiac Magazine  The ever-increasing Islamization of Europe added to the presence os anti-Semitism is, I believe, akin to the Nazification of the 1930's as it relates to the future of European Jews. TD

 "Michel Gurfinkiel is in the tradition of the great French essayists who put the issues of the day squarely before the public. It is a bold thing to do, especially when the subject under discussion is the fate of the Jews.

 

"Since 2000 in France alone, as Gurfinkiel notes, 7,650 anti-Semitic incidents ranging from petty insults to brutal racist murders have been reported, and this statistic ignores many more incidents that are known to have occurred but

were not reported to the authorities. Things have come to the point where the chief rabbi of France advises Jews not to wear a kippah (right) in the street because it makes them recognizable as Jews. “Never” has dropped out of the slogan of solidarity, leaving “Again” to stand on its own."

Author Pryce-Jones makes a case I find fascinating: that Europe has rejected the concept of nation-states (the Euro being evidence of that) and the sense of nationhood in Israel is anathema to them. All this while- conversely -making Palestine a nation-state the Holy Grail of liberal nations. Looking into the future:

"If Jews do indeed abandon Europe, it will be to escape a situation in which their very identity is increasingly treated as a matter of suspicion and political contention. Should an emigration en masse come to be a reality, Gurfinkiel concludes, it would constitute “a profound blow to the collective psyche of the Jewish people” as well as a shattering judgment on the “so-called European idea.” In the absence of living Jews, Europeans will have nothing but Holocaust museums and memorials on which to base the moral reckoning of their past."

UPDATE: 

New York Times Dissects the Clinton’s World of Money, Ambition, and Politics

The NY Times article being discussed below:
Unease at Clinton Foundation Over Finances and Ambitions  "Soon after the 10th anniversary of the foundation bearing his name, Bill Clinton met with a small group of aides and two lawyers from Simpson Thacher and Bartlett. Two weeks of interviews with Clinton Foundation executives and former employees had led the lawyers to some unsettling conclusions."

The Left Turns on Hillary Clinton  I'm not too sure about this because this would have come out anyway eventually. By revealing all this so far ahead of the 2016 election, the story will have peaked in time to be called "old news" when it really counts. Perhaps the Times did Clinton a favor.
"In the first sign that Hillary Clinton’s march to the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination is no cinch, the New York Times has done the unthinkable – take a close look at the Clinton family’s complex world of money, ambition, and politics."

Once upon a time, a man started a foundation to promote himself and....
"The Clinton Foundation found itself on the front page of The New York Times. I just don't think that too many "Clinton-istas" expected an article like this:"....
....
"I always thought that this foundation was a gigantic ego-trip and this article confirms it.  It was a way for President Clinton to spend his retirement as the central figure on the world stage." 

Will claims about her foundation's financial problems hurt Hillary's presidential hopes?   "A scathing article in The New York Times tells how the 'rotating board of old Clinton hands' posed problems for the financial future of the charity because they moved in and out of the chain of command fluidly and made connections to their for-profit business that caused poorly defined divisions."

From James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal: Queen Hillary? Political rent-seeking and her expected coronation.   "But what intrigues us is the way in which laws restricting political speech--in the areas of both campaign finance and taxation--are vital to, as Firestone puts it, "Ms. Clinton's political future.' " In other words, beware her crocodile tears and righteous anger over voter I.D.