Obama is a greater threat than Toronto’s crack mayor -- By Charles Hurt, The Washington Times

Disgraced. An embarrassment. Utter disregard for the law.

Toronto’s crack mayor Rob Ford?

No. President Obama.

This is a man who was granted the extraordinary luxury of attending one of the most prestigious universities in the world. He went to law school. He told us he was an expert on constitutional law. He taught students about the U.S. Constitution.

He is now our president and fills a rather large role in executing that Constitution.

And it is as if he has never read the actual Constitution. Or, as if he read it and found it all so confusing that he simply could not comprehend one of the most basic tenets of it — that the legislature writes laws, which then go to the president for either his signature or veto.

Presidents do not get to write laws. They do not get to ignore laws they do not like or make up new ones on a whim.

Presidents do not get to refuse to negotiate with Congress on financial matters because the president doesn’t like what Congress has been urgently instructed to do by voters. He doesn’t get to make end runs around Congress.

The previous administration felt so constrained by this immutable precept of the Constitution that administration lawyers took advantage of confusing parts of laws passed by Congress and wrote their own understanding of what those gray areas meant — obviously tilted as much in their favor as possible.

Democrats in Congress and the left howled in horror at this reach outside of the Constitution for tiny little scraps of power — even though presidents ever since James Monroe have used this power.

Democrats held hearings about the unchecked abuse of power and warned of a sinister “unitary executive” secretly thwarting Congress and trashing the Constitution.

Whatever you thought of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney’s “signing statements,” you would have to agree that the constitutionality of them was, at the very least, debatable. Their legality was not a slam dunk either way.

But do you know what is not debatable? What is not debatable is whether Mr. Obama can take a properly passed law such as the Defense of Marriage Act, and simply refuse to enforce it. He is not allowed to wave his hand and determine that millions of illegal immigrants now in the U.S. are suddenly legal.

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