Showing posts with label executive power. Show all posts
Showing posts with label executive power. Show all posts

Monty Pelerin: Is The President Sane?

Obama's action go beyond mismanagement.         Questions regarding President Obama’s competence have mostly been limited to management abilities, laziness, honesty and the like. Allison Martinez, however, opens an issue that many whisper about but dare not speak of publicly — his mental stability: Claims of grandeur that are      ... MORE

Michael Connelly: The Horrible Truth About ObamaCare

A Constitutional attorney reads the entire law.      Well, I have done it! I have read the entire text of proposed House Bill 3200: The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009. I studied it with particular emphasis from my area of expertise, constitutional law. I was frankly concerned that parts of the proposed law that were being      ... MORE

Fred Branfman: America's Creeping Police State

Can the rapid growth of authoritarianism be stopped?     For those alarmed by the steady growth of lawless, violent and authoritarian U.S. Executive power for the last 50 years, the events of the past few months have been exciting. The emergence of a de facto coalition of progressives and conservatives opposing the National Defense    ... MORE

Matthew May: I Will Not Comply

A declaration of independence and liberty.             Like most members of the Congress that passed it and, undoubtedly, the president of the United States who signed it, I have not read the entirety of the ill-named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  Yet there is one aspect concerning that legislation of which I am certain: I will    ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: Obama's Flip-Flop On Spying

Learning the joys of unaccountable surveillance.       President Obama claims he welcomes the public debate over government surveillance programs that track personal information about millions of innocent Americans. But if it were up to him, the debate never would have happened, since the programs would have remained secret.  ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: High Risk, Low Yield

Can ObamaCare be defunded?      This has been the worst time, politically, for President Barack Obama since he took office. Recent polls reveal that public confidence in both his domestic and foreign policies has been falling, amid revelations about their defects and dangers. Even people who once supported and defended him have now turned  ... MORE

Regulation Nation: Obama Expands The Regulatory State

By Ben Goad and Julian Hattem.     President Obama has overseen a dramatic expansion of the regulatory state that will outlast his time in the White House. The reach of the executive branch has advanced steadily on his watch, further solidifying the power of bureaucrats who churn out regulations that touch nearly every aspect of American ... MORE

Obama Moves To Levy Cellphone Tax Without Congress

Government of unlimited power flexes its muscles.     As we now know from the New York Times, the president hopes to "seize any opportunity I can find to work with Congress to strengthen the middle class, improve their prospects, improve their security. But where Congress is unwilling to act, I will take whatever administrative   ... MORE

Federal Judge Questions Government Drone Program

by Kevin Johnson.        A federal judge expressed deep reservations Friday about the authority of the government to carry out targeted killings of Americans in counterterrorism drone strikes abroad and appeared to reject a Justice Department argument that the courts had no role in one of the most controversial parts of the nation's     ... MORE

Where's Fidelity To The Constitution When You Need It?

by Andrew Napolitano.   When former spy Edward Snowden revealed to the world that the federal government is spying on most Americans, most Americans were surprised and unhappy. But half of official Washington yawned before it roared. Somehow the people in the government had a pretty good idea of what government spies  ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: Obama Debates War On Terror With Self

President criticizes his own abuses of executive power.   Last week a guy named Barack Obama gave a speech in which he expressed appropriate concern about the abuse of government power in the name of fighting terrorism. Too bad he's not in a position to do anything about it. Obama, who used to teach constitutional law at the University of  ... MORE

Gene Healy: Should Obama Be Impeached?

We've had too few impeachments in American history.   You may be appalled about IRS inquisitions for Tea Party groups and dragnet subpoenas for investigative reporters, but what's really outrageous, according to some commentators, is that a couple of Republicans recently dared to use the "I-word"—"impeachment."         ... MORE

Blow Off Pampered Greenies, Build Keystone XL

by Katie Kieffer.  Recycling is fine. Conservation is fine. But sometimes greenies cross the line. They expect you and me to go jobless and hungry so they can save a porcupine. President Obama has been pampering his radical greenie friends for far too long. Even the Presidents’ State Department has thrice declared Keystone XL to be      ... MORE

Matt Welch: When The Madness Began To Lift

The fruits of Rand Paul's historic filibuster.   The 2004 Republican National Convention, held in New York City as close as possible to the three-year anniversary of the day the World Trade Center was pulverized by terrorists, was a three-day festival of chest-thumping snarls directed at anyone who’d dare mention the concepts of civil liberties or   ... MORE

Sen. Rand Paul: Minimizing Authority Of Judges

The case against mandatory minimums.       I, like anyone else, whether a member of Congress or a parent, am concerned with the well-being of our children. We all want to keep our families and our communities safe. We want to see violent predators and criminals put behind bars and punished for the harm they do to others and to. ... MORE

Moving Gun Control Tyranny Forward Via Executive Power

by Jordy Yager.   President Obama is quietly moving forward on gun control. The president has used his executive powers to bolster the national background check system, jumpstart government research on the causes of gun violence and create a million-dollar ad campaign aimed at safe gun ownership. The executive steps will give federal law    ... MORE

Obama's Tyranny: Petty Or Something More Sinister

by Matt Holzmann.   Last week, headlines informed us that, because of the Sequester, the FAA will be reducing the number of Air Traffic Controllers and closing 149 control towers completely. Earlier, the Department of Homeland Security released hundreds of illegal aliens awaiting deportation because they could not afford to hold them ... MORE

Eric Holder: If The President Does It, It's Legal

by John W. Whitehead, Rutherford Institute.    “I never thought I would see the day when a Justice Department would claim that only the most extreme infliction of pain and physical abuse constitutes torture and that acts that are merely cruel, inhuman and degrading are consistent with United States law and policy, that the Supreme Court would have  ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: Obama's Cloak Of Invisibility

Secrecy frustrates challenges to counterterrorism tactics. Back in 2007, when he was running for president, Barack Obama criticized George W. Bush's expansive vision of executive power, saying, "I reject the view that the president may do whatever he deems necessary to protect national security." The day after taking office in 2009, Obama    ... MORE