[Ed. note: consider this a guest column by my bro Dave. As with my posts, comments both positive and negative are both welcome and encouraged. Enjoy!]

This is the latest comeback from the left when faced with opposition towards Obama’s newest executive actions.

Is this what our Republic has been reduced to? A government so dysfunctional that this President has to issue executive orders to get his agenda moving forward, because he hasn’t got the legislative talent and leadership skills to acknowledge that working with the opposition, no matter how distasteful and dogmatic they may be, is required by the Constitution in order to do things legally?

Let’s face it. Obama could have signed immigration reform back in 2009 or 2010 when he had both houses of Congress in his back pocket, had immigration reform really been important to him. But I guess he was too tied up in trying to pass Obamacare; after all, it must have taken a lot of work to convince members of his own party to support a bill where much of the details were either hidden or made up (See: Jonathan Gruber). But surely after 2010, Obama could have issued his executive orders on immigration if they were so important to him, but I guess his upcoming re-election was more important than those immigrants he so recently felt for.

Never mind that most people reading the tea leaves after the 2010 midterms realized that there would have to be more engagement with House Republicans in order to get any immigration reform passed.

But this is Obama. A president who doesn’t know what half a loaf means. A president who wants what he wants, and is willing to go to extra-Constitutional steps to get his way, rather than have to deal with people who might want something different. First, Obamacare at it’s core had to go before the Supreme Court to decide the legality of the individual mandate and the fine (now tax) if people chose not to participate (we’ll touch on that a little later). Next it was forcing private entities to cover forms of birth control that could be used to terminate pregnancies in their early stages. Finally, the House of Representatives has actually sued the administration for arbitrarily delaying the employer mandate under Obamacare.

And before all this, the administration has been on the losing side of 13 unanimous SCOTUS decisions where they were either the entity bringing the legal action, or did not withdraw support for a previous administration’s actions.

And now the left’s only answer to Obama’s latest overreach is “Let’s see how the courts decide”.

Seriously?

Wouldn’t you hate to be the lawyer defending Obama’s latest actions on immigration, given the recent revelations regarding Obamcare via Jonathan Gruber? Let’s say Mr. Smith is presenting the government’s case in front of the SCOTUS this time around. Knowing the wool was pulled over their eyes the last time the government was pleading the individual mandate (the tax that was a fine before it became a tax again), how receptive are certain justices going to be knowing they were blatantly lied to the last go around? “I’m sorry Mr. Smith, but are you Grubering us again?”

That ought to go over well.

Ultimately, though, the point is that the Framers of the Constitution never intended for the legislative branch to sue the executive branch over and over again. They intended to have both sides work together, and if they couldn’t, each branch had LIMITED options open to them to address overreach. Congress retains the power of the purse, and the President has veto power over bills he doesn’t agree with. The executive order route was never intended to change policy, but to correct unforeseen errors in legislation that Congress never intended.

It is a sad and sorry affair when the default defense of an out-of-control President is “Let’s see how the courts decide”. THIS is the lasting legacy of the Obama presidency that people will be debating for years.

— Dave Richard