State-run media can attempt to distort past Republican presidents' clean-up executive actions, but there is no precedence for what Obama is about to dictate tonight, which is two-fold: instructions for law enforcement to ignore law, while inviting a further invasion...“The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all, and that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m President of the United States of America.” ~ Senator Barack Obama, March 31, 2008
NRO: The latest from apologists for President Obama’s planned decree to unilaterally amnesty perhaps 5 million illegal aliens is that Reagan and Bush Sr. did it, so what’s the problem?There's no enforcement of law passed by Congress here. Separation of Powers, Article I, be damned, so say the Left and this president. What Obama will pronounce tonight is nothing short of brazen, iron-fisted dictatorial fiat for the sake of his party (just like a good little Marxist) that ultimately violates both his Oath of Office and America's sovereignty.
...the fallback position of those claiming precedent is to grasp at two actions taken by Reagan and the elder Bush that came in the wake of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) amnesty. Nice try.
The Reagan administration action that amnesty advocates point to is simply irrelevant to the current case and trumpeted only because Reagan’s name is attached to it. In what was a legitimate exercise of prosecutorial discretion shortly after passage of the 1986 law, INS announced that as a practical matter it would look the other way under certain circumstances with regard to minor children both of whose parents received amnesty but who did not themselves qualify for the amnesty. It granted no work permits, Social Security numbers, or driver’s licenses. In the context of trying to implement the convoluted IRCA amnesty, I might well have done the same thing.
George H. W. Bush’s 1990 “family fairness” policy is at least somewhat germane, in that it provided for renewable “voluntary departure” (i.e., amnesty) for certain spouses and children of amnesty beneficiaries, including work authorization. But it is no precedent either...
...both Reagan’s and Bush’s moves were cleanup measures for the implementation of the once-in-history amnesty that was passed by Congress. In other words, it was a coda, a tying up of loose ends, for something that Congress had actually enacted, and thus arguably a legitimate part of executing the law — which is, after all, the function of the executive. Obama’s threatened move, on the other hand, is directly contrary to Congress’s decision not to pass an amnesty. ...
It is absurd for Obama to claim that the very executive overreach that prompted Congress to impose these limits established a precedent for even greater executive overreach today.
Whatever their merits, the Reagan and Bush measures were modest attempts at faithfully executing legislation duly enacted by Congress. Obama’s planned amnesty decree is Caesarism, pure and simple. “Precedent” isn’t the right word for the Obama crowd’s invocation of Reagan. The right word is “pretext.”
"To what length will you abuse our patience?" ~ Cicero to Catiline in 63 B.C.Related links: Democrats and Drive-Bys Distort Reagan to Validate Obama's Executive Order on Amnesty
Obama’s royal flip-flop on using executive action on illegal immigration
Reagan and Bush Offer No Precedent for Obama's Amnesty Order
Rick Perry: Texas might sue Barack Obama
ADDENDUM: GatewayPundit adds to the discussion, asking is it a coincidence that Obama announces executive amnesty on National Revolution Day in Mexico?
We might also acknowledge the other significant pandering going on with Obama’s amnesty announcement airing during the Latin Grammys, and Univision will stop the awards program to air it LIVE!
The Mexican Revolution, began on November 20, 1910, and continued for a decade. The United States, Mexico’s northern neighbor, was significantly affected by the human dislocation that resulted: if someone did not want to fight, the only alternative was to leave the country—and over 890,000 Mexicans did just that by legally emigrating during the second decade of the 20th century.
The Obama administration and minions in the media insist President Reagan also used executive amnesty to allow illegals in the country.
As Rush Limbaugh explained, “This is a bald-faced flat-out lie.”
Ronald Reagan signed a piece of legislation. It was the Simpson-Mazzoli Act. It was 1986. Congress debated and passed a law to grant amnesty to three million illegal immigrants, and Reagan signed it. — Obama is passing amnesty without Congressional legislation.
Related links: ABC, CBS, and NBC refusing to air Obama’s speech tonightWaPo: President Obama’s announcement Thursday night of his plans to overhaul the nation’s immigration system is scheduled to happen at an opportune time — at least if the White House is hoping to reach a captive audience of Hispanic television viewers.
Obama’s 8 p.m. Eastern time announcement will come at the start of the second hour of the 15th annual Latin Grammys, which begins at 7 p.m. Thursday on Spanish-language TV network Univision. At least 9.8 million viewers tuned in to all or part of last year’s telecast, meaning Univision defeated CBS, Fox and NBC that night.
Univision says it will postpone part of the awards show to air Obama’s speech, while the big four TV networks, ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC, currently have no plans to air the address.
"Tune In to See the Constitution Destroyed!" (Limbaugh on Obama Amnesty speech)
ADDENDUM II: Perhaps I was too hasty in saying there was no precedent. It's certainly not a precedent set by Reagan or Bush that Obama's following, but as J. Christian Adams points out, the president's actions tonight do resemble that of a historical nefarious nullifier named John C. Calhoun.
And tonight, Obama adds his name to the long list of consequentialists who brazenly ignore laws to achieve their ends.PJMedia: One of the ideas that plunged America into the bloody Civil War was the belief that federal laws could be nullified by those who disagree with them. Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina was a chief proponent of the doctrine that Southern states could nullify federal laws if states disagreed with them. In announcing a lawless amnesty edict tonight, President Obama is our modern John C. Calhoun.
Elementary school civics class has taught the same thing for two hundred years: Congress makes the laws, the president enforces the laws, the judiciary interprets the laws. The reason this is so is because individual liberty thrives when government is hobbled by division of power. People live better lives when federal power is stymied.
When President Obama announces that he will be suspending laws to bless the illegal presence of millions of foreigners in the United States, he will have adopted the most basic philosophy of John C. Calhoun: some laws can be tossed aside because his ends justify the lawlessness.
Make no mistake about why Obama wants millions of foreigners to remain in the United States. He told us exactly why in 2008: he aims to “fundamentally transform” America.
One way to transform America is to import populations with cultural and legal traditions foreign to American traditions. Central and South America has a cultural tradition of instability in government, of graft, corruption, and civil strife. People from those countries bring an expectation that the systems are rigged against them, because oftentimes they are.
Obama wants to transform America by transforming who Americans are. Even if these millions are not granted the right to vote (immediately), their children, yet unborn, will be granted it by virtue of being natural-born citizens. Obama is playing the long game.
Obama learned the history of the 20th century: when radical statists take power quickly, openly, and brazenly, Americans will stand in the breach. Whether on the blazing beaches of Saipan, in the Ardennes snow, or in dark alleys in Bucharest, Americans will risk it all. But Americans are less familiar with a slow-moving threat to American values. The long game isn’t as recognizable to us.
The long game is what Putin plays in Eastern Europe, what radical Islam plays everywhere, and what Obama now plays domestically with amnesty. Obama just had to reach back and borrow some ideas from one of the most vociferous defenders of Southern slavery, and nullify laws he took an oath to enforce.
