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Saturday, February 18, 2012

How is President Obama Assaulting the Constitution?

Obama - Shredding Constitution

The Heritage Foundation writes about President Barack Hussein’s constant and consistent on the U.S. Constitution.

JRH 2/18/12
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How is President Obama Assaulting the Constitution?

2/17/12

With tens of millions of Americans watching, Barack Obama stood at the West Front of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2009, with his left hand on the Bible and his right hand held aloft, swearing to God and country that he would preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Yet despite that pledge, President Obama has time and time again taken actions contrary to the principles of the founding document he swore to uphold, setting forth on a heretofore uncharted path of unconstitutionality that will fundamentally change the character of this Republic for the worse, not for the better.

Last week, America erupted in protest against one of those actions — the White House’s determination to force all insurance plans to cover, at no charge, contraceptives, abortion-inducing drugs, and sterilization as part of Obamacare. That mandate includes employers like Catholic hospitals, Christian schools, and faith-based pregnancy care centers, all of which must offer the coverage, regardless of their beliefs. This assault on the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberties met with opposition from all corners, prompting the president on Friday to address the American people and pledge his commitment to protecting religious liberties by offering an “accommodation” to these institutions — forcing insurance companies to offer free contraception so religious institutions don’t have to.

The trouble is, that “accommodation” was merely hypothetical and Obama’s commitment to protecting religious liberties was illusory. Obamacare’s anti-conscience mandate did not change in a final rule that was posted later that day. And even if the president’s hypothetical became reality, Heritage’s Jennifer Marshall explains that the religious liberty problem still remains:

It does not disentangle religious employers, since insurers will shift the burden back to religious groups through higher premiums in one form or another. Nor does it address the potential religious liberty concerns of other employers or individuals.

This is only the beginning of the problems Americans will continue to see as the Obamacare ‘essential benefits’ package takes shape. The anti-conscience mandate is a warning sign for us all of how one-size-fits-all health care requirements will trample religious liberty as well as individual liberty.

Yesterday at The Heritage Foundation, Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) spoke of his opposition to this latest Obamacare mandate. Afterward, in an exclusive interview with Heritage, Blunt called the move a “genuine assault on First Amendment freedoms” and dismissed the president’s proposed “accommodation” as nothing more than an “accounting gimmick.” “This is not about cost. It’s about the Constitution,” Blunt said. “And if you can decide this no longer offends me because I don’t have to pay for it, I guess your concern is financial all the time and not faith-based.”

Unfortunately, the president’s disregard for the First Amendment is not his first assault on the Constitution. Earlier this year, President Obama cast aside our government’s fundamental separation of powers when he made four unconstitutional appointments without bothering to seek the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate, as the Constitution requires.

Yesterday, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), who was among the first to warn about the consequences of the president’s unilateral action, spoke at Heritage about the ramifications of those appointments. In an exclusive interview, he explained that today, more than a month after the illegal appointments, a new director is running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and three members of the National Labor Relations Board are conducting business — all in blatant violation of the Constitution.

“He’s reading the Constitution in a way that’s manifestly wrong,” Lee explained. “It’s contrary to the text. It’s contrary to tradition and practice, and it’s contrary to logic.”

“This is not a partisan issue for me. I would be equally outraged if this were a Republican president doing this same thing,” Lee added. “Once this gains some momentum, this practice could be very destructive to the Senate’s prerogative of advice and consent. This is a power that doesn’t belong to the president. It belongs to the people of the United States of America.”

President Obama, of course, offers justifications for his actions. In the case of the illegal appointments, he says that he simply “can’t wait” for the Congress to act. In the case of the Obamacare contraception mandate, he insists he is acting in the best interest of the American people, while offering a “fair” accommodation to religious institutions. The trouble is that the president is measuring himself against his own subjective standard while disregarding the objective limitations on his power.

In a government where there are no practical limits on executive overreach, there are likewise no limits on the government’s ability to impose its will on the people. With the president’s trampling of religious liberties, the country is getting its first taste of the consequences of Obama’s unmitigated power grab. And if this power remains unchecked, there are certainly more consequences to come.
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© 2012, The Heritage Foundation
Conservative policy research since 1973

5 comments:

  1. Comment from article on President Obama's assault on the Constitution.

    President Obama did say that he was going to 'fundamentally CHANGE' America. He was not joking.

    Your article spoke mainly about the Health Care system that was passed 'so that YOU can find out what is in it'. No wonder they passed it without further discussion. It would not have passed, and THEY knew it. This is not representative government as we have known it for more than 200 years.

    President Obama is effectively 'fundamentally CHANGI NG' America.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Pretty much every piece of garbage puked up on this toilet seat sounds like this:

    'A liberal muslim homosexual ACLU lawyer professor and abortion doctor was teaching a class on Karl Marx, known atheist

    ”Before the class begins, you must get on your knees and worship Marx and accept that he was the most highly-evolved being the world has ever known, even greater than Jesus Christ!”

    At this moment, a brave, patriotic, pro-life Navy SEAL champion who had served 1500 tours of duty and understood the necessity of war and fully supported all military decision made by the United States stood up and held up a rock.

    ”How old is this rock, pinhead?”

    The arrogant professor smirked quite Jewishly and smugly replied “4.6 billion years, you stupid Christian”

    ”Wrong. It’s been 5,000 years since God created it. If it was 4.6 billion years old and evolution, as you say, is real… then it should be an animal now”

    The professor was visibly shaken, and dropped his chalk and copy of Origin of the Species. He stormed out of the room crying those liberal crocodile tears. The same tears liberals cry for the “poor” (who today live in such luxury that most own refrigerators) when they jealously try to claw justly earned wealth from the deserving job creators. There is no doubt that at this point our professor, DeShawn Washington, wished he had pulled himself up by his bootstraps and become more than a sophist liberal professor. He wished so much that he had a gun to shoot himself from embarrassment, but he himself had petitioned against them!

    The students applauded and all registered Republican that day and accepted Jesus as their lord and savior. An eagle named “Small Government” flew into the room and perched atop the American Flag and shed a tear on the chalk. The pledge of allegiance was read several times, and God himself showed up and enacted a flat tax rate across the country.

    The professor lost his tenure and was fired the next day. He died of the gay plague AIDS and was tossed into the lake of fire for all eternity.

    Semper Fi.
    p.s. close the borders'

    ReplyDelete
  3. Joe Six-Pack is correct. Obama is fundamentally changing America. WE MUST VOTE HIM OUT IN 2012.

    Anonymous I love your passion.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Joe Six pack is drunk but you are mentally ill.

    ReplyDelete
  5. This particular Anonymous said:

    "Joe Six pack is drunk but you are mentally ill."

    When a Leftist cannot refute the truth a Leftist turns toward their inner mindset of immature expression. God have mercy on the Leftist Anonymous.

    ReplyDelete