So I’ve been waiting quite awhile now for The Whitehouse to publish their latest Executive Order regarding illegal immigrants.
I think now I will be waiting forever for the opportunity to discover exactly what Constitutional or legal authority Obama thinks justified him to take these actions. Why? Because he didn’t use an Executive Order. He used an Executive Memorandum. Executive orders are required to cite their legal justification ever since President Kennedy issued an Executive order demanding same. Executive Memorandum? Not so much.
So while the Left has been touting Obama’s historic low numbers of Executive Orders I doubt very much they realize that Obama has set a new all time record for the most ever Presidential Executive Memorandum issued.
I leave it to marikod to explain to you the details I may have left out. To me it all seems quite clear, Obama doesn’t want to be bothered with having to explain why his actions are legal
He pointed out that Obama is not the first president to use memoranda to accomplish policy aims.
Also he mentions this point in his presidency, he's the first to use them more often than executive orders.
So if both sides do it then what is the problem?
Just seems to me people want to look for anything these days.
I will say this at least the guy tried to be fair a little in his article!
The problem is when people forget history and act like this Judge!
I would say this sums up the immigration debate with these last couple of lines.
We are six years in and Republicans are still whining daily like perpetual sore losers who refuse to take responsibility for their own failures.
The writer of this article said it the best! LO
I expect President Obama's Executive decision regarding illegal immigrants to go to many trials, eventually to the Supreme Court.
One judge has already ruled certain aspects of the Executive decision unconstitutional.
"A federal court in Pennsylvania declared aspects of President Obama’s executive actions on immigration policy unconstitutional.
According to the opinion by Judge Arthur Schwab, the president’s policy goes “beyond prosecutorial discretion” in that it provides a relatively rigid framework for considering applications for deferred action, thus obviating any meaningful case-by-case determination as prosecutorial discretion requires, and provides substantive rights to applicable individuals. As a consequence, Schwab concluded, the action exceeds the scope of executive authority."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/12/16/district-court-declares-obama-immigration-action-unconstitutional/
Posted By: ed2000
So I’ve been waiting quite awhile now for The Whitehouse to publish their latest Executive Order regarding illegal immigrants.
I think now I will be waiting forever for the opportunity to discover exactly what Constitutional or legal authority Obama thinks justified him to take these actions. Why? Because he didn’t use an Executive Order. He used an Executive Memorandum. Executive orders are required to cite their legal justification ever since President Kennedy issued an Executive order demanding same. Executive Memorandum? Not so much.
So while the Left has been touting Obama’s historic low numbers of Executive Orders I doubt very much they realize that Obama has set a new all time record for the most ever Presidential Executive Memorandum issued.
I leave it to marikod to explain to you the details I may have left out. To me it all seems quite clear, Obama doesn’t want to be bothered with having to explain why his actions are legal.
- the legal justification has
been provided and quite clearly I might add:
-Congress has passed legislation permitting certain classes of individuals to be eligble for deferred action;
-Congress has passed statutes that emphasize federal policy is to unite undocs with lawfully present family members
-Congres has never acted to limit deferred action to undocs;
Congres has enacted statutes that endorse deferred deporation;
-the Exectutive action reflects considerations within the agency’s expertise;
-the EA is of temporary duration and
DHS retains discretion as to how to implement the program.
The fine attys in the Office of Legal Counsel of DOJ prepared this legal opinion back in November. The OLC said he has the authority. Don’t see how it could be illegal if this independent agency says itIis okay. I suspect the White House counsel agrees.
Not the best legal reasoning you’ve ever seen, you say? Well, do you want to compare this opinion with Mr. Yoo’s legal opinion that it was okay to engage in "enhanced interrogation" bc it was not torture?
I didn’t think so
"""Well, do you want to compare this opinion with Mr. Yoo’s legal opinion that it was okay to engage in "enhanced interrogation" bc it was not torture? ""
So are you saying that the enhanced interrogation was legal?
...him permission to do what he wants, whether it's torture or executive orders. Then the president claims it's legal because the OLC is "independent."
Read this horseshit dumped by the OLC: "OLC must always give candid, independent, and principled advice —?? even when that advice is inconsistent with the aims of policymakers."
What a crock! the OLC is part of the DOJ which is controlled by the Executive Branch.
You can't claim torture was legal but Obama's executive orders are not. Both Bush and Obama relied on the OLC to justify their actions.
Read this horseshit dumped by the OLC: "OLC must always give candid, independent, and principled advice —?? even when that advice is inconsistent with the aims of policymakers."
What a crock! the OLC is part of the DOJ which is controlled by the Executive Branch.”
I think I know where the “crock” is and it is not the Office of Legal Counsel.
If you had read the OLC opinion, you would know that they actually did tell Mr. Obama that he did NOT have the authority to take all of the actions he initially planed to take. For example, Mr. Obama wanted to offer broad deportation relief to the parents of the undoes in a program he created by Executive Order in 2012. But the OLC told him he could not do that bc it would not be a permissible exercise of enforcement discretion:
" For the reasons discussed below, we conclude that DHS’s proposed prioritiza- tion policy and its proposed deferred action program for parents of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents would be permissible exercises of DHS’s discretion to enforce the immigration laws. We further conclude that, as it has been described to us, the proposed deferred action program for parents of DACA recipients would not be a permissible exercise of enforcement discretion."
And guess what? After getting this opinion, Mr. Obama narrowed his plan to make it lawful – it does not extend to parents of the program. The OLC also pointed out other limitations on what he could do that Mr. Obama honored.
This is not John Yoo writing an after the fact memo to justify torture. OLC atty Thompson gave candid and independent advice even though it did not support what Mr. Obama wanted.
You can go stand in the corner with Ed now
...You should have done that and sent me a PM. Learn your place, boy.
But at least you did show Needle the difference between Bush and Obama - Obama listened to the OLC and conformed to their opinion while Bush told Woo to bend over and made Woo write an opinion to justify the torture Bush/Cheney wanted to carry out.
Did what he did to save lives.
Obama did what he did to get votes and dilute the labor force further.
Bush 1 Obama 0
how Obama fares with his Executive Memorandum in the courts . 
Posted By: marikod
- the legal justification has
been provided and quite clearly I might add:
-Congress has passed legislation permitting certain classes of individuals to be eligble for deferred action;
-Congress has passed statutes that emphasize federal policy is to unite undocs with lawfully present family members
-Congres has never acted to limit deferred action to undocs;
Congres has enacted statutes that endorse deferred deporation;
-the Exectutive action reflects considerations within the agency’s expertise;
-the EA is of temporary duration and
DHS retains discretion as to how to implement the program.
The fine attys in the Office of Legal Counsel of DOJ prepared this legal opinion back in November. The OLC said he has the authority. Don’t see how it could be illegal if this independent agency says itIis okay. I suspect the White House counsel agrees.
Not the best legal reasoning you’ve ever seen, you say? Well, do you want to compare this opinion with Mr. Yoo’s legal opinion that it was okay to engage in "enhanced interrogation" bc it was not torture?
I didn’t think so.
And here I thought I could rely on you to explain to us how this executive memorandum or other memoranda maintain the transparency President Obama promised. I never asked for Obama's justifications in my post. I asked why HE won't tell us. I should have assumed all you would do is go all juridically on us.
I'm glad you think you've found his reasoning although you do admit you aren't 100% positive Obama's Whitehouse lawyer agrees, let alone Obama himself.
Anyway, I now attempt to return to the original topic of my post. As USA Today points out, touting Obama's low quantity of Executive Orders is virtually useless nowadays as he seems to have forsaken his Executive Order pen for an Executive Memoranda sharpie or pencil or phone call or post-it note or whatever other informal communication device he chooses. Also, the things you once thought to be so important and reliable now could be missing over the next two years. Relying on Obama to provide all those citations of U.S. Code backing his reasoning would seem to be an illogical exercise moving forward.
-- Modified on 12/17/2014 10:25:50 PM
“I think now I will be waiting forever for the opportunity to discover exactly what Constitutional or legal authority Obama thinks justified him to take these actions.”
You erroneously presumed that Mr. Obama’s use of a presidential memorandum instead of an EO was an attempt to avoid having to explain the legal basis underlying his action.
In fact, he elected to have the OLC provide the legal framework no doubt bc he felt that this would be more credible than having White House counsel do this.
And while you were “waiting” to discover the legal authority for the action, the rest of the world was reading the OLC opinion which was dated November 19, 2014. Nor is this a phony after the fact legal opinion a la Bush and Yoo that was kept secret for years – this opinion was released publicly and the OLC told the president he could not do everything he wanted to do. How could you be any more transparent than that?
But here is all 33 pages of the OLC opinion if you are so interested
Counting seems to have taken backseat to your amateur legal skills. Then again, as an ex-porn star, only having to count to 1 for the money shot and then you're done does make some sense.
Regardless, thanks for the link, but my points still remain regarding Executive Orders vs. Executive Post-it Notes.
I'm sure I'll get around to reading it soon since all my favorite TV shows are headed into Christmas schedule reruns and I can't possibly watch "A Charlie Brown Christmas" one more time. In the mean time maybe you can give us the Cliff Notes version as I'm sure you've already read all 33 pages. When you get to the part where The President signs his name in agreement, as he does for an Executive Order, please drop everything you're doing and report back. Maybe by then the rest of the country and the media will have awoken as well and will have quit calling this an Executive Order.
-- Modified on 12/17/2014 11:48:35 PM
It's just further proof of what a huge liar Emperor Obama is.
