For my 100th post, I wanted do something a bit more encompassing than I usually do, something that spans the 99 previous posts. Because I write about a lot of different things, it’s not easy to string it all together, so I decided to take a look at Barack Obama’s presidency as it relates to the Constitution. I figure this can help people assess his presidency.
Like it or not, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. On the whole, I think Obama’s record on the Constitution is not favorable (even compared to his predecessor, George W. Bush, who had a bad record here) and we see several areas in which he has either applied the Constitution in a questionable manner or ignored it entirely. I find this tragically ironic because he was a professor of Constitutional law. I’d think he’d use that expertise to uphold the Constitution rather than dismantle it so he could build an imperial presidency. I’ve gone into detail previously on many of these, so this is more of a list rather than an expansive review of each scenario.
On the negative side, we start with the Obamacare individual mandate, which would force an individual to engage in commerce by purchasing a government-approved health insurance product or face the consequences. I think the Supreme Court got the ruling wrong by upholding it as a tax and it’s a very dangerous precedent, so I will count it against Obama (I’ll do a future post about the ruling and my opinion may change). Feel free to disagree on either the constitutionality of the measure or my counting it against Obama’s constitutional record.
Next, there’s this whole recess appointment business, in which Obama has disregarded checks and balances by attempting recess appointments while Congress was not in recess.
Then, there was the Libya situation (probably others, as well) and Obama’s disregard for the War Powers Act. At least when Bush took us into Afghanistan and Iraq, he took the time to get it approved by Congress versus Obama simply committing our forces to the effort without Congress’ approval. We’ve also recently learned through the New York Times that Obama has continued and expanded the Bush administration’s cyber attacks on Iran’s nuclear program, which could be taken as an act of war.
More recently, he sidestepped Congress with regards to immigration by basically implementing portions of the DREAM Act via executive order. Article I, Section 8 clearly empowers Congress, “To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” which is the Founding Fathers’ way of saying that the president cannot unilaterally set immigration policy and Congress has power in the matter. Note that Congress has repeatedly rejected the DREAM Act in a show of checks and balances, not obstructionism. This also gets into the 14th Amendment questions I’ve previously discussed regarding citizenship in the US.
The biggest problems of all were in the “War on Terror”. If you thought Bush was bad here, wait until you see how Obama’s taken the torch and run with it during his term. In general, yes it was George W. Bush who started us down this tyrannical path and laid the foundation for the future, but Barack Obama has gone down that path even more aggressively. Here are a few examples of how Obama built upon Bush’s foundation.
Bush opened Guantanamo Bay and Obama went back on his campaign promise to close it (hypocrisy aside, the facility’s existence violates so much of the Constitution that I don’t even know where to start).
Bush increased security at airports, which was bad enough, but Obama’s taken that to a whole new level with invasive body scans and searches, trampling the 4th Amendment like I mentioned a while back.
Bush also expanded the military commissions instead of and in addition to the courts for trials. Obama has continued this practice. I’ve also questioned the constitutionality of using military commissions versus civilian courts (at least with regard to US citizens).
But, wait, there’s more because Obama’s done a lot to blaze his own path. Obama also assassinated Anwar al Awlaki, who was an American citizen. This tramples on the 5th, 6th, 8th, and 14th Amendments (probably others, too). I didn’t post about Anwar al Awlaki at the time because I was unable to verify his US citizenship, but I did recently and this episode becomes another bad one for Obama. The government can’t be allowed to murder its own citizens. Also, note the details recently published by the New York Times about the hitlist meetings.
As if assassinating an American citizen wasn’t bad enough, Obama also more recently signed the NDAA to authorize the indefinite detention of US citizens without the right of a trial. Surely, I can’t be the only one who’s troubled by a president who thinks he has the authority to indefinitely detain and/or murder American citizens (and, as I’ve mentioned before, there’s a school of thought suggesting that the legal protections outlined in the Constitution should be extended beyond US citizens to non-citizens).
It gets even worse as Obama also recently signed an executive order updating the government’s power of eminent domain as it applies to “emergency” situations. This is not limited to war and can be applied during times of peace. Essentially, the government says it is allowed to seize and control pretty much anything it wants (food, water, energy, raw materials, etc.). To be fair, the only real changes from the 1994 version of the order were to add in the Department of Homeland Security, so we can really only blame Obama here for upholding too broad of an existing power rather than new power like elsewhere in this list.
We’ll close this sorry list out with a quick mention of the NSA’s new Utah facility, which is another attack on our individual legal rights, as it enables the government to implement Obama’s recent guidance to the intelligence community stating that he thinks they now can store digital information on US citizens with no suspected ties to terrorism for up to five years (versus the previous directive to destroy it immediately).
On the positive side, Obama did stand up for the 1st Amendment with regards to SOPA/PIPA, essentially forcing those bills to be dramatically altered, scrapped entirely, and/or restarted from scratch out of concerns for free speech and cybersecurity. I’m sure this isn’t the end for the matter and I see this as an ongoing battle.
Obama gets both credit and criticism on gay rights. He repealed DADT. Obama has not yet pushed for a full repeal of DOMA and its unconstitutional measures, but he has stopped defending it. So, he gets credit for agreeing with me on the constitutionality of DOMA. However, the problem is the president is required by the Constitution to, “Take care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” per Article 3, Section 3. So, he’s violating the Constitution in the process here. We can’t have a president deciding that, just because he disagrees with a law, he won’t enforce it, whether we like the law or not. The same goes for a president trying to enforce a law that doesn’t exist. Both are dangerous. Again, this is an ongoing battle.
Did I miss any?
I think it can always be worse, but I’m not about to detail exactly how. Obama doesn’t need my help in coming up with ways to trample the Constitution.
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