Gloucester Times (Mass.), June 1:
Many of President Barack Obama’s most high-profile initiatives are under fire in the courts. An interesting analysis piece in The Washington Post’s political blog goes so far as to state that the president’s legacy is in jeopardy.
Author Amber Phillips catalogs the challenges facing the president.
Just last week, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the administration’s request to lift an injunction that is blocking implementation of President Obama’s executive order ending deportation of illegal immigrants. The appellate court had issued the injunction at the request of Texas and the 25 other states suing the administration over the executive order.
In denying the request, the appellate court made it clear it isn’t buying the Obama administration’s argument that refusing to deport the illegals is merely “prosecutorial discretion.”
“This decision is a victory for those committed to preserving the rule of law in America,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton told The Wall Street Journal. “Telling illegal aliens that they are now lawfully present in this country, and awarding them valuable government benefits, is a drastic change in immigration policy. The president’s attempt to do this by himself, without a law passed by Congress and without any input from the states, is a remarkable violation of the U.S. Constitution.”
Phillips notes the court battle over immigration is unlikely to be resolved before Obama leaves office in January 2017.
Also under review by the Supreme Court is the Environmental Protection Agency’s crackdown on coal-fired power plants and whether it imposed undue costs on the plant operators. The crackdown is the result of Obama executive orders to fight climate change.
Other aspects of Obama’s legacy ”“ such as elements of the Affordable Care Act ”“ are also under court review. But the two noted above are interesting because both involve the president’s use of executive orders to bypass a recalcitrant Congress.
The use of executive orders to overcome congressional inaction is a constitutional crisis that has been building through several presidential administrations, both Republican and Democratic.
Presidents are action-oriented. They know they have eight years at most to enact an agenda and secure their place in the history books.
Congress, increasingly, is a place of inaction. Writing presidential initiatives into law means taking votes. And taking votes on often controversial matters means leaving a record that may place one’s re-election chances in jeopardy. Better to do nothing at all, from the point of view of a congressman or senator whose primary interest is getting re-elected.
So if Congress will not write the laws a president wants, well then, the president will just bypass the law altogether and issue some quasi-legal orders to the bureaucracy to do whatever it was he wanted done anyway.
That’s not how the country is supposed to work.
It is supposed to be difficult to pass new laws. The Founders made it so by design. And the fact is that the people are sharply divided along ideological lines. Liberals and conservatives today have fundamentally opposing views on the state of the nation and what its future course ought to be. With the nation so sharply fractured, gridlock is not necessarily a bad thing.
No American should want to live under a system in which one person rules by decree, which is what executive orders are ”“ no more, no less.
We hope that in these cases and others, the judiciary delivers a rebuke to the executive branch ”“ one that applies to Democratic and Republican administrations alike ”“ and sets the nation on a course toward the restoration of the rule of law.
The Providence Journal (R.I.), June 2, 2015
It’s as if the world of soccer-playing nations awakened and said enough.
Enough of these dubious elections. Enough of the behind-the-scenes bargaining and envelope passing. Enough of this intolerance of dissent. Enough of the scrabbling away from the sunlight.
Enough of you, Sepp Blatter, and your accomplices. Your soiling of the world’s beautiful game is, in the end, too much for us to accept.
It’s been a stunning several days in international soccer. Mr. Blatter, widely reviled by the world’s soccer enthusiasts but feared by insiders, won re-election Friday as president of FIFA (Fidiration Internationale de Football Association), soccer’s governing body, under the darkest cloud that’s ever shadowed the sport ”“ and that’s saying something.
This is the sport that, while captivating the world’s nations from Liechtenstein to Chile, has been beset by the bribery of referees, the payoffs of players and rigged votes to award the World Cup to dubious host countries like Qatar. Most would call it corruption, but for FIFA, it’s just business as usual. Yet finally, the stinking fish became too much for the world beyond Mr. Blatter’s enablers to stomach.
When law enforcement officials in Switzerland and the United States swept in last month with arrests, indictments and published charges against some of the sport’s top officials, they rocked FIFA and those who care deeply about the sport. And their timing, on the eve of Mr. Blatter’s presumed re-anointing, was exquisite.
Despite everything, it wasn’t enough to prevent Mr. Blatter from winning re-election Friday to a new four-year term, achieved only when his lone rival withdrew. But Mr. Blatter won without the support of the European nations or the United States, which feel less beholden to him than do the confederations of small nations in Africa and Asia.
The reasons for the debacle at FIFA are as plain as the charges spelled out in the statements from the U.S. Department of Justice and the Swiss police: tens of millions of dollars of bribes paid for media rights, money laundered through bogus organizations, fortunes amassed by FIFA executives. Soccer fans around the developed world are applauding U.S. authorities for finally intervening forcefully to arrest this long-running farce.
Mr. Blatter remains FIFA president, but he is seriously weakened. Some of his top enablers are suddenly out of commission. On the horizon are a series of court filings that will show how soccer’s governors have enriched themselves and corrupted the enterprise. It’s going to be ugly, but cleansing.
It’s as if a shaft of light has pierced a stormy sky, falling unexpectedly on a green field where men and women still play the world’s favorite sport.
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