The 'declarant presidency' era must end

The 'declarant presidency' era must end Hugh Hewitt Columnists Washington Examiner
By: Hugh Hewitt

President Obama ordered his Department of Justice to cease defending the Defense of Marriage Act, even though it was passed by a bipartisan coalition and signed into federal law by President Clinton on Sept. 21, 1996.

No appellate court has decreed the law constitutionally flawed. The president has simply willed it so in an unprecedented attempt to repeal a duly passed and executed law by simple fiat.

Obama has ordered his Environmental Protection Agency to develop an administrative cap-and-trade system regulating carbon emissions despite the fact that Congress refused to authorize just such a system last year. The president is willing the oceans to stop rising and the towers of paper regulations to keep rising.

Obama is on the verge of dictating a unilateral set of changes in federal contracting law obliging bidding participants to disclose the level and identity of the recipients of their corporate political contribution.

This slam-down substitutes for the failure of last year's Democratic majority to pass the campaign finance law they desperately wanted. These rules effectively amend federal law without passing an amendment to federal law.

The Obama Imperial Presidency 2.0 is driving its National Labor Relations Board to wage war on Boeing's new assembly plant in Charleston, S.C., even as it unleashes the Consumer Product Safety Commission to launch recall after recall, creating an epic insecurity among potential recipients of such notices.

Did we mention the Obamacare and Dodd-Frank mandates, rolling inexorably out of the rabbit warrens of the regulation writers, each inch of rules another suffocating blow to real jobs with real career paths leading to real productivity increases and real prospects for promotion?

Offered a palm branch by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, the president used it as a switch and smacked it back and forth across the Wisconsin Republican's face.

Offered a fresh start in the Middle East, the president excoriated Israel and put the long-shelved 1967 borders into play, which is like asking the late George Blanda to return to run the Washington Redskins when the NFL reconvenes. The '67 lines, like Blanda, had a role once but are worse than useless now as they are both dead.

We have not even mentioned that he is poised to impose "card check," new rules for defining wetlands, no procedures for declaring species endangered.

The sky is the limit for directed innovation in border control policy. The "virtual fence" has been scrapped and DOJ's "fast and furious" have shipped deadly weapons to the cartels with the hope of tracing them, only to lose them.

It is far worse than an era of an Imperial Presidency. It is the era of the President Declarant. We have never before had such a moment, and it will require rapid response from House Speaker John Boehner making much use of former Solicitor General Paul Clement's estimable skills.

Boehner ought to consider establishing a special legal defense fund for the purpose of cabining the president's unilateralist Hyde within. It is very clear we will need one before the president's term is over.

What we will need if he somehow wins a second term will be a state of emergency among judges called upon to set aside partisan allegiance and act with an eye on preserving not a momentary advantage, but an overarching system, a glorious, wonderfully effective system of checks and balances.

Once begun, unilateral rule is as addictive as it is destructive of balance of powers. It has to be stopped in November 2012, for another four years of accelerating concentration of power so that power can be deployed unilaterally would leaves the United States fundamentally off the rails on which is has run for 220 years.

Examiner Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/06/declarant-presidency-era-must-end#ixzz1PBfa4tHc